Bizarre History

Unique Find In Digging A Well

Chad Lewis |

Unique Find In Digging A Well
Strange Specimens Brought To The Surface In Shawtown
– Eau Claire Daily Leader | September 2, 1910

Can it be that once upon a time giant animals and human persons roamed about in the vicinity of Shawtown, only some two hundred feet lower down. And it can be that all of a sudden a land slide rushed down and buried everything. Anyhow something strange has came to pass in the digging of a well below Shawtown and which has caused many to look in the pages of history.

It is this way-Chas. Jones, 1637 Menomonie Street, who is foreman for Mrs. Oliver Sweet, owner of a well-digging apparatus, has been sinking a will on the place of Chas. Fleming in a Town of Union and which comes up to Shawtown. When down 158 feet we thought there were queer things in sight. He hauled up everything and to his surprise found clogged in the sand-bucket chunks of wood, pieces of limbs of trees and a mineral resembling silver growing onto one of the limbs.

Now the question arises as to how such things could be so far below the surface and when all traces of anyone sinking a well there before have proven futile. Many examining the specimens, some well-versed in historical specimens, say they must belong to a period before the flood. No doubt, they sat strange animals roamed the face of the earth in those days, millions of years ago, and browsed on these trees. Many of the specimens appeared to be petrified and the wood much resembling the cedar.

 

Chad’s Take: Where is the follow up article?

First of all for those of you who have never heard of Shawtown it is a small neighborhood located on the west side of Eau Claire. If you take Menomonie Street to the west and pass over Clairemont Ave you will be going into Shawtown. The Shawtown Neighborhood Park is located right off of Ferry St.

The main drawback with this article is the basic fact that no follow up articles were even written. The poor reader is left on their own to ponder what just the heck was really dug up in this well. Was this find the buried remains of some prehistoric animal? Was it evidence of previously unknown settlers to the area? Perhaps it was simply just a bunch of underground wood chips? Unfortunately the Daily Leader never solves the mystery and we are left one-hundred years later to decide for ourselves. My take is that since nothing big was ever mentioned of this find, that it was simply determined to be nothing out of the ordinary. However, I certainly could be wrong, so grab a shovel and start digging because the archeological find of the century could be sitting in Shawtown waiting for you to rediscover it.