Day 1 (Pictures to come later)

Day 1 of a new project is almost always one of the most frustrating. It's long, mentally and physically taxing, and there's geometry involved. We had to find old property lines to reconstruct the placement of an alley, as that is the most likely place to find a privy. We had an aerial photograph with the property lines superimposed, and a few places of permanent reference (i.e., a few telephone poles and a permanent property marker). First we measured the distance between the telephone poles to make sure that they were accurate proxies for the property lines. We then used pull rules (or roll tape, or whatever you want to call them) and a compass to extend the property lines to the place where they alley should be. Midwestern towns are almost always set along the cardinal directions, which made our job much simpler.

The interior north-south property boundary was used as an alley at least in the early 1920s, as reported from a former Shabbona Grove resident. Along the alley we set up a grid system- 3 meters to either direction (east and west) of the alley. (This will all make more sense when I add pictures). We had to climb through a dense second-growth forest with diverse undergrowth to do much of this work. Luckily for us, however, the area we are interested in is situated nicely in a clearing. This will make the excavation much easier, although we will still have to deal with a lot of roots. We still cleared away lots and lots of the bushes, grass, and prickilies that had colonized the alley. After lunch we used a total station (a piece of survey equipment that is an evolved transit, for those of you who have worked construction) to more precisely map exactly the places that we marked. This will allow us to create a 3D picture of the site and allow us to know the spatial relationships between our grid and the property lines. You need a line of sight to and from each point in order for the total station to get a reading, however, so we were not able to get many shots because of the dense overgrowth. We were, however, able to get the western edge of the property line and our grid. From these points we should be able to extrapolate to our other places of interest on the property.

Overall, the day went well! The weather was nice and our measurements seem to make sense. It may thunderstorm tomorrow so it's nice to know that the grid is set up and ready to go for shovel test pits! Pictures will come soon when I find the energy to search for my USB cord. :)