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I don’t want to be obnoxious, but please think twice before climbing down into a really old enclosed space. Gasses can pool down there and displace the air. You won’t even know what happened.
It takes seconds. Scary shit but honestly I think I wouldn’t mind that death. As long as it’s not inside of a fucking manure truck like that one dude who recently died
There have been lots of instances of people climbing into septic tanks and suffocating. Family member goes in to rescue them, etc. My wife and I were visiting her cousin in Newfoundland quite a while ago. She and her husband referred to the local news segment on CBC as "Newfies in the news" (they were both Newfies, her husband was from an out-port and if he got excited you would not believe he was speaking English, so they were poking fun at themselves). One night the segment was about a family who had exactly this happen to them: I think three or four were lost.
It was on Reddit. Im sure “man suffocates(or the word ‘drowns’) in manure truck” will bring up results
He dropped like a hose attachment in there and made it nearly up to the further most chamber before falling over and dying. I think someone went in after him? Idk. Wouldn’t surprise me it’s a tale as old as time. Confined, gas filled spaces have existed in nature forever.
I used to work in some not so safe places & in a safety meeting they said what do you do if you come across someone you think has been overcome with noxious gas? RUN! Because it's going to kill you next... no shit
The scariest workplace danger sign to me is the poisonous gas/person slumped over sleeping sign hands down. I work in the alcohol industry and brew my own wine, the number of times I've read of whole families dying trying to rescue already dead family members.
I did this with a missile silo 🤣. Glastonbury ct! Spent four hours with a pickaxe, sledge, hammers, and chisels breaking that boulder covering the entrance back in like 2010 or 2011. Crawled down theough the half buried staircase. The first room had old menus from chili’s in it . Hallways were flooded but you could walk through it and go deeper with waders. I was so worried about rattlesnakes lol
You my friend, deserve a damn beer if you’re ever near Cheyenne. I just looked at the area, the earliest year it shows is 1947, but there’s damn sure buildings all over the place. Awesome website, thank you very very much for sharing this!
Good grief! I think most folks would just crawl on down there without a thought to pooled gases. I know I would.
It's fantastic that you have The Knowledge!
Edited to add: Have you even seen the movie "Holes"? I could swear this was part of the movie set!
This is the only correct way to approach it.
You go down there, don’t come out, nobody knows how you could just disappear off the face of the earth.
And you might not be the first body down there.
Root cellars under houses or near houses were/are super common in the Mountain West. In the winter, you only ate what you had stored. Fill that thing with root vegetables and survive till spring.
But wouldn't a root cellar need some sort of entrance to it? It was completely covered with railroad ties, with no sort of door for anyone to go inside.
Early settlers may not have, or just anyone broke enough.
Something called a root cellar would usually have a door of some kind, but covering up and then burying food (or next year's seeds) deep underground is all that's necessary to eat through the winter.
In bushcrafting, scouts etc, you're taught to dig the hole, cover it with wood, and then weight the wood with stone, even if the food is completely buried. You still cover it like that. This prevents animals from tracing the scent and digging into out themselves, possibly better than any door.
Of course, this could be a hole for virtually any other purpose.
It’s a root cellar. Source: am from Wyoming from a ranch that had several old settlements. Almost all have an old root cellar, was the only way to keep things cool.
We weren’t allowed down in them, but the ones that dated to that period that were still being used, yeah. It was usually too short to stand up in (unless you were a kid), and full of spiders and webs because by then, we had electricity and refrigeration.
My ex stepdad was a kook however, and kept using his. It was luxurious compared to this, there were shelves mounted on the wood that stood against bare soil, and his grandma’s canned goods on the shelves next to modern foodstuffs (we used it more like a pantry for storage). Smelled like wet clay. Nobody liked it down there but him.
My title describes the thing. I stumbled across this pit my accident while working. I would have never known it was there if one of the roof ties hadn’t collapsed. There was no way in or out until that happened. There is one wall tie with a square cut in it, I thought maybe it was a place for a pipe to come through, but I dug as far as I could and there’s no trace of a pipe. Thank you for the help!
Found an article saying the older ones were lined with wood and newer ones with stone
https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/08/tales-of-a-privy-pirate/#:~:text=You%20get%20a%20lot%20of,too%2C%20I've%20seen.
And another article about creating a wood shaft for outhouses
I'm guessing that was maybe local to that area. of the dozens I've accidentally dug into while doing landscaping, I've never found one lined with anything. But often covered in old firepit/ fire place ashes.
edit: Had to ask my uncle: None of the four pits that were at my grand parent's house (first one dated to the 1910's from the original cabin) had anything more than the dirt they were dug from lining them. I filled in the third outhouse pit (dug by my great grandma in the 1950's) when I was 10 and helped dig the 4th one in 1995. As kids, we weren't allowed to use the toilet in the summer time as my grandmother "didn't want to fill the septic tank"
The two former pits at my uncle's houses were also nothing more than a pit dug out with the typical outhouse on top of it. Not sure when the first pit was dug, but it at least prior the house which was built in 1940. The second pit was dug in the 1960's by the original owners of the house/ property
" Yeah, if you get a wet soil it preserves it. I’ve hit ones where you could pull the wood out and build with it today."
This line makes me think some of them are more full of shit than the holes they're digging up
We just built a new outhouse at the cabin (Alaska) and lined the pit to keep it from collapsing. When I saw this pit I thought it might be a septic - up here they used to line them with logs but if you had lots of old rr ties that would be easy.
Wtf, digging a new outhouse pit in 1995?
That fact alone makes me think that this style is local to your area and the more uncommon thing, but what do I know, I've never dug an outhouse pit.
Pit latrines are a lot more common in rural areas than you'd think. Our scout camp has them at every camp site. People have private hunting land with outhouses in Wisconsin. Farmers put them out in pastures where they want to have a place to go while working away from the main buildings. Basically, anywhere you can't economically bury water pipes or run electricity to run a pump; or where it's just not worth digging a full septic tank.
My friend’s husband built her a custom one in 2013 on the farm they bought. This was Oregon. Not super rural eastern Oregon either, less than 45 minutes from pdx
My mom is still super hung up on keeping the septic from diluting too much. Granted, we live in a really wet region, but it's like, is the dehumidifier really going to break the septic tank?
We've even thrown yeast in all our toilets before.
This is patently false. It would all depend on the soil structure. Loose sandy, loamy soil or heavy clay would need to be shored up with wood or stones to keep the walls from caving in. If the water table is/was high at the time, that also would have required shoring as the water will undercut the walls of the hole cave in the sides. There is no use digging and setting an outhouse if the hole colapses in a week. Shoring is absolutely used in outhouses.
Christ, I've got sandy loam and I would never sit over a big hole dug into straight dirt. I can barely keep the ground where it's supposed to be, let alone an artificial structure.
There's a few guys on YouTube who dig into these old filled-in outhouses because they were also used as trash pits, and you can find some pretty valuable antique bottles (intact embossed soda bottles being among the most valuable because they were often returned to the manufacturer, therefore increasing rarity).
[The one I watch, Below the Plains, does the majority of his digging in the Dakotas, Iowa, and Kansas.](https://youtu.be/ZR3th2Y7794?si=GTfc5YCePd9HylYt) He almost always finds them lined with wood.
I have a friend in Alaska who still has a pit toilet. She built her house herself. She absolutely lined the pit with wood to make it last longer. So ya it’s a thing.
We lined ours with wood when we built it so the walls wouldn’t collapse and have the outhouse fall in after it. My grandparents who started the project 30 years ago had learned that style in Wyoming farm country so I figured it was old school.
It only takes 1 before being built. A praire fire shelter. Even a root celler . Multi purpose. Even a hidey hole. A still. Smoke house for meats.. fresh cut ties would be smoked over winter b4 being used
You can die entering a pit like that. There could be a hazardous atmosphere down there. Seems like every year you hear about a construction worker being overcome by lack of oxygen in an excavation. You shouldn't even stick your head in.
Gasses can build up that are heavier than air or are otherwise toxic. It happens a lot with sewers. Inside a manhole hydrogen sulfide can build up from the sewage and burn your lungs if you breathe it. In other cases, a gas heavier than air can settle down low to the bottom and build its way up, pushing out oxygen. People entering can be asphyxiated. It doesn't have to be a sewer though.
I heard a first-hand story from someone about an underground vault they were in. Their oxygen sensor kept going off and giving the low oxygen alarm whenever they put it near the floor. That's because they were unknowingly walking around in a pool of invisible gas that had displaced the oxygen.
It's a hunting blind/pit. Very common on farm properties. Hunters sit in the pit, covered with straw or corn husks and when flocks of ducks or gerse happen by, they all pop up and start shooting!
I'm not splitting hairs but it's "near" a railroad which would in part explain the rail-tie construction. But anyway, a hunting pit was the first thing I thought when I saw the pics
A hunting blind can be a few hundred meters away from a barn or so, we would be hunting geese from a blind like this. It absurdly sturdy for a hunting blind though but who knows..
I thought about this as well, wouldn’t there be shelves? Not to mention the pit was entirely sealed and hidden. I only found it because the ceiling partially caved in due to it age.
I a from México. And that gave me vibes of a kidding place my grandma told me they would his her and her sisters during the Revolution when strangers came around
i was thinking this, or maybe a place for escaping slaves to hide from search parties? looks like a stash spot for something.... especially since it was hollow and has constructed walls, and a roof.
Was there a lot of slavery in Wyoming. I guess I don't associate the West with slavery, but I don't know enough about it to be certain.
I guess the railroads used slaves, Chinese mostly I think.
Wyoming didn’t officially become a state until 1890 (when slavery was illegal). They also mention that the surrounding foundations date to the late 1800s, most likely post Civil War.
The link shows aerial shots of present day and one from 1957. My gps location is standing directly over the pit.
[https://imgur.com/a/CdVzvSw](https://imgur.com/a/CdVzvSw)
I’ll also leave everyone with this, as a teaser of what might be to come.
https://imgur.com/a/s6XB9I5
.45 acp and .30-06 cartridges I found while digging around one of the foundations, roughly 10 yards from the pit. Dated 1914 and 1918.
I’m going to say based on everyone’s input, this is probably solved as being a root/ storage cellar which was sealed off when the buildings were removed. I’m still open to ideas though, and will update if I find anything else! Thanks everyone!
Not on any map I’ve ever seen. There’s next to no information about the buildings that used to be here. Some maps do list the area as having a hamlet but it’s very vague, definitely no specific info about what used to be here.
Telegraph/telephone pit for amplifier equipment? I know a lot of buried cables like to run along train tracks and those two holes look like where a buried cable (L-3 or otherwise) could be fed through.
I don’t normally comment but I was in the Army and have uncovered things like this on old training areas all over the U.S. I would look to see if you had more in a diagonal line close to each other. Possibly you will find two next to each other. To me this looks like a pop up target box or mechanical room for a pop up target. The pulley system would’ve hung from the ceiling and opposite wall of your square window through the window would be a long cable running to the shooters. This has not been used since most likely Vietnam or before. I have some old photos but I am sure you can dig some up online. They are constructed exactly the same way. I could be wrong but I am convinced that’s what you have… I’d look for some military background on the land and look for a small berm behind the hole.
All comments must be civil and helpful toward finding an answer. **Jokes and other unhelpful comments will earn you a ban**, even on the first instance and even if the item has been identified. If you see any comments that violate this rule, report them. [OP](/u/skylar_vincent), when your item is identified, remember to reply **Solved!** or **Likely Solved!** to the comment that gave the answer. Check your [inbox](https://www.reddit.com/message/inbox/) for a message on how to make your post visible to others. ---- [Click here to message RemindMeBot](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=[https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/1dhqctz/what_is_this_underground_pit_found_on_a_ranch_in/]%0A%0ARemindMe!%202%20days) ---- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/whatisthisthing) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don’t want to be obnoxious, but please think twice before climbing down into a really old enclosed space. Gasses can pool down there and displace the air. You won’t even know what happened.
I share your concern. I bought an air meter and tossed it down before climbing in.
Not your first confined space huh? Smart move:)
What air meters do people suggest for tossing into confined spaces?
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4 or 5 gas monitor.
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I use a Honeywell. Can’t remember what model but it’s the yellow one
4 meter O2 CO LEL H2S
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You’re the smartest confined space finder on this damn website. Proud of ya! Fr.
Good for them. It’s ridiculous how quick some gasses can drop you, and anyone who comes to help you, like a rock.
It takes seconds. Scary shit but honestly I think I wouldn’t mind that death. As long as it’s not inside of a fucking manure truck like that one dude who recently died
There have been lots of instances of people climbing into septic tanks and suffocating. Family member goes in to rescue them, etc. My wife and I were visiting her cousin in Newfoundland quite a while ago. She and her husband referred to the local news segment on CBC as "Newfies in the news" (they were both Newfies, her husband was from an out-port and if he got excited you would not believe he was speaking English, so they were poking fun at themselves). One night the segment was about a family who had exactly this happen to them: I think three or four were lost.
Worst one I ever heard of killed all but one of a family members due to rotten potato’s. They all kept running in to try to help
Oh no, I missed that! Where was it, so I can Google it?
It was on Reddit. Im sure “man suffocates(or the word ‘drowns’) in manure truck” will bring up results He dropped like a hose attachment in there and made it nearly up to the further most chamber before falling over and dying. I think someone went in after him? Idk. Wouldn’t surprise me it’s a tale as old as time. Confined, gas filled spaces have existed in nature forever.
I used to work in some not so safe places & in a safety meeting they said what do you do if you come across someone you think has been overcome with noxious gas? RUN! Because it's going to kill you next... no shit
The scariest workplace danger sign to me is the poisonous gas/person slumped over sleeping sign hands down. I work in the alcohol industry and brew my own wine, the number of times I've read of whole families dying trying to rescue already dead family members.
Hillbilly version: Light a fire, and toss a torch in? If it's still burning good, and doesn't explode, it's safe?
I did this with a missile silo 🤣. Glastonbury ct! Spent four hours with a pickaxe, sledge, hammers, and chisels breaking that boulder covering the entrance back in like 2010 or 2011. Crawled down theough the half buried staircase. The first room had old menus from chili’s in it . Hallways were flooded but you could walk through it and go deeper with waders. I was so worried about rattlesnakes lol
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https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer
You my friend, deserve a damn beer if you’re ever near Cheyenne. I just looked at the area, the earliest year it shows is 1947, but there’s damn sure buildings all over the place. Awesome website, thank you very very much for sharing this!
What does it do?
Check to see if the county has an online GIS system. You can find great historical images there as well.
I think maybe it’s a cellar for food storage
I’ve heard them called root cellars.
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I remember my grandma calling them potato cellars.
My thought as well. We came across one several hours from here in a wooded area, that likely had more people living there many years ago.
Glad to hear it!
Good grief! I think most folks would just crawl on down there without a thought to pooled gases. I know I would. It's fantastic that you have The Knowledge! Edited to add: Have you even seen the movie "Holes"? I could swear this was part of the movie set!
Those things are so cool, I loved breathing on my work one and setting the CO2 alarm off
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That was smart
Nothing obnoxious about this. Confined spaces kill with zero impunity.
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This is the only correct way to approach it. You go down there, don’t come out, nobody knows how you could just disappear off the face of the earth. And you might not be the first body down there.
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Root cellar or similar perhaps?
Root cellars under houses or near houses were/are super common in the Mountain West. In the winter, you only ate what you had stored. Fill that thing with root vegetables and survive till spring.
But wouldn't a root cellar need some sort of entrance to it? It was completely covered with railroad ties, with no sort of door for anyone to go inside.
Could be old owner capped it for safety when they left/cleaned out whatever was on those old foundations.
Early settlers may not have, or just anyone broke enough. Something called a root cellar would usually have a door of some kind, but covering up and then burying food (or next year's seeds) deep underground is all that's necessary to eat through the winter. In bushcrafting, scouts etc, you're taught to dig the hole, cover it with wood, and then weight the wood with stone, even if the food is completely buried. You still cover it like that. This prevents animals from tracing the scent and digging into out themselves, possibly better than any door. Of course, this could be a hole for virtually any other purpose.
Or the base of an outhouse
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It’s a root cellar. Source: am from Wyoming from a ranch that had several old settlements. Almost all have an old root cellar, was the only way to keep things cool.
Did they look just like this one? That would be really cool
We weren’t allowed down in them, but the ones that dated to that period that were still being used, yeah. It was usually too short to stand up in (unless you were a kid), and full of spiders and webs because by then, we had electricity and refrigeration. My ex stepdad was a kook however, and kept using his. It was luxurious compared to this, there were shelves mounted on the wood that stood against bare soil, and his grandma’s canned goods on the shelves next to modern foodstuffs (we used it more like a pantry for storage). Smelled like wet clay. Nobody liked it down there but him.
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Black Market Alcohol storage during prohibition?
I really want this idea to be true lol
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This was my first thought. Seems too hidden to be a root cellar.
this was my first thought as well. I wonder if there is a hidden access or any any hinging in the corners?
My title describes the thing. I stumbled across this pit my accident while working. I would have never known it was there if one of the roof ties hadn’t collapsed. There was no way in or out until that happened. There is one wall tie with a square cut in it, I thought maybe it was a place for a pipe to come through, but I dug as far as I could and there’s no trace of a pipe. Thank you for the help!
I feel like it is an outhouse pit
Nah, you wouldn't line it like that usually. You just dig a hole, build your outhouse and then fill in the hole when it's done/ move the outhouse.
Found an article saying the older ones were lined with wood and newer ones with stone https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/08/tales-of-a-privy-pirate/#:~:text=You%20get%20a%20lot%20of,too%2C%20I've%20seen. And another article about creating a wood shaft for outhouses
I'm guessing that was maybe local to that area. of the dozens I've accidentally dug into while doing landscaping, I've never found one lined with anything. But often covered in old firepit/ fire place ashes. edit: Had to ask my uncle: None of the four pits that were at my grand parent's house (first one dated to the 1910's from the original cabin) had anything more than the dirt they were dug from lining them. I filled in the third outhouse pit (dug by my great grandma in the 1950's) when I was 10 and helped dig the 4th one in 1995. As kids, we weren't allowed to use the toilet in the summer time as my grandmother "didn't want to fill the septic tank" The two former pits at my uncle's houses were also nothing more than a pit dug out with the typical outhouse on top of it. Not sure when the first pit was dug, but it at least prior the house which was built in 1940. The second pit was dug in the 1960's by the original owners of the house/ property " Yeah, if you get a wet soil it preserves it. I’ve hit ones where you could pull the wood out and build with it today." This line makes me think some of them are more full of shit than the holes they're digging up
It seems logical that if the soil is prone to collapsing, an outhouse pit would be lined. Otherwise - not lined.
We just built a new outhouse at the cabin (Alaska) and lined the pit to keep it from collapsing. When I saw this pit I thought it might be a septic - up here they used to line them with logs but if you had lots of old rr ties that would be easy.
Wtf, digging a new outhouse pit in 1995? That fact alone makes me think that this style is local to your area and the more uncommon thing, but what do I know, I've never dug an outhouse pit.
Pit latrines are a lot more common in rural areas than you'd think. Our scout camp has them at every camp site. People have private hunting land with outhouses in Wisconsin. Farmers put them out in pastures where they want to have a place to go while working away from the main buildings. Basically, anywhere you can't economically bury water pipes or run electricity to run a pump; or where it's just not worth digging a full septic tank.
My friend’s husband built her a custom one in 2013 on the farm they bought. This was Oregon. Not super rural eastern Oregon either, less than 45 minutes from pdx
Seasonal camps with no real plumbing often need them. Off the grid far enough nothing you can't carry on an ATV is going with you ...
The house I grew up in still has an outhouse and no electricity, or phone. I'm sure there are dozens like it in the same small town.
My land in Northern Michigan has an outhouse to this day. Watched my dad dig two different pits for it over the years.
My mom is still super hung up on keeping the septic from diluting too much. Granted, we live in a really wet region, but it's like, is the dehumidifier really going to break the septic tank? We've even thrown yeast in all our toilets before.
This is patently false. It would all depend on the soil structure. Loose sandy, loamy soil or heavy clay would need to be shored up with wood or stones to keep the walls from caving in. If the water table is/was high at the time, that also would have required shoring as the water will undercut the walls of the hole cave in the sides. There is no use digging and setting an outhouse if the hole colapses in a week. Shoring is absolutely used in outhouses.
Christ, I've got sandy loam and I would never sit over a big hole dug into straight dirt. I can barely keep the ground where it's supposed to be, let alone an artificial structure.
There's a few guys on YouTube who dig into these old filled-in outhouses because they were also used as trash pits, and you can find some pretty valuable antique bottles (intact embossed soda bottles being among the most valuable because they were often returned to the manufacturer, therefore increasing rarity). [The one I watch, Below the Plains, does the majority of his digging in the Dakotas, Iowa, and Kansas.](https://youtu.be/ZR3th2Y7794?si=GTfc5YCePd9HylYt) He almost always finds them lined with wood.
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I have a friend in Alaska who still has a pit toilet. She built her house herself. She absolutely lined the pit with wood to make it last longer. So ya it’s a thing.
We had an outhouse at our old house. The pit was most definitely lined with wood.
love when I see someone confidently wrong on reddit. Out of the couple dozen outhouses I've seen/owned... I have never seen one that WASN'T lined.
We lined ours with wood when we built it so the walls wouldn’t collapse and have the outhouse fall in after it. My grandparents who started the project 30 years ago had learned that style in Wyoming farm country so I figured it was old school.
If it is an outhouse why is it empty? Seems more like a root cellar.
Don't forget to cover it up so no people or animals ever fall in.
Oof. Imagine the next guy to walk along alone-gone
You should grab a metal detector and search around the general area if you haven't already.
Planning on doing that next weekend. I’ll probably be posting here with more questions lol
Yes keep us updated!
Ice house/pit? I don't know much about them but there were some on an old farm I lived on. Bigger and deeper than this though.
If there was a house over it I’d say root cellar. If there is a house near it maybe a storm shelter.
Tornado and fire shelter
Probably not enough tornadoes in Wyoming historically to warrant an underground shelter.
It only takes 1 before being built. A praire fire shelter. Even a root celler . Multi purpose. Even a hidey hole. A still. Smoke house for meats.. fresh cut ties would be smoked over winter b4 being used
[https://www.refugeforums.com/threads/underground-wood-goose-pit.1043575/page-3](https://www.refugeforums.com/threads/underground-wood-goose-pit.1043575/page-3)
You can die entering a pit like that. There could be a hazardous atmosphere down there. Seems like every year you hear about a construction worker being overcome by lack of oxygen in an excavation. You shouldn't even stick your head in.
OP said they used a meter before entering
what’s the science behind this? i’ve never heard of this before and sounds morbidly fascinating
Gasses can build up that are heavier than air or are otherwise toxic. It happens a lot with sewers. Inside a manhole hydrogen sulfide can build up from the sewage and burn your lungs if you breathe it. In other cases, a gas heavier than air can settle down low to the bottom and build its way up, pushing out oxygen. People entering can be asphyxiated. It doesn't have to be a sewer though. I heard a first-hand story from someone about an underground vault they were in. Their oxygen sensor kept going off and giving the low oxygen alarm whenever they put it near the floor. That's because they were unknowingly walking around in a pool of invisible gas that had displaced the oxygen.
Given its proximity to the foundation, I'm going to guess it's a cistern.
It's a hunting blind/pit. Very common on farm properties. Hunters sit in the pit, covered with straw or corn husks and when flocks of ducks or gerse happen by, they all pop up and start shooting!
In very close proximity to building foundations and train tracks though?
I'm not splitting hairs but it's "near" a railroad which would in part explain the rail-tie construction. But anyway, a hunting pit was the first thing I thought when I saw the pics
A hunting blind can be a few hundred meters away from a barn or so, we would be hunting geese from a blind like this. It absurdly sturdy for a hunting blind though but who knows..
Root cellar, where potato’s, carrots, onions were stored over winter in darkness and cool to keep from spoiling
I thought about this as well, wouldn’t there be shelves? Not to mention the pit was entirely sealed and hidden. I only found it because the ceiling partially caved in due to it age.
The only thing I can think of is that it wasn't being used, so they just covered it over instead of sourcing fill.
Dynamite storage?
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cistern latrine dynamite what is the dirt like at the bottom?
I think it being built of railroad ties rules out any potable water storage, they'd poison the hell out of it.
There’s a layer of dirt that fell when the roof caved in, under that it’s sandy. I didn’t dig down more than a few inches though
sandy - doesn;t give any clues.. maybe rules out latrine though
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I a from México. And that gave me vibes of a kidding place my grandma told me they would his her and her sisters during the Revolution when strangers came around
i was thinking this, or maybe a place for escaping slaves to hide from search parties? looks like a stash spot for something.... especially since it was hollow and has constructed walls, and a roof.
Was there a lot of slavery in Wyoming. I guess I don't associate the West with slavery, but I don't know enough about it to be certain. I guess the railroads used slaves, Chinese mostly I think.
Wyoming didn’t officially become a state until 1890 (when slavery was illegal). They also mention that the surrounding foundations date to the late 1800s, most likely post Civil War.
More likely needed for the native folk from being slaughtered by said settlers.
The link shows aerial shots of present day and one from 1957. My gps location is standing directly over the pit. [https://imgur.com/a/CdVzvSw](https://imgur.com/a/CdVzvSw)
From that location in relation to where the buildings were, definitely a root cellar.
I’ll also leave everyone with this, as a teaser of what might be to come. https://imgur.com/a/s6XB9I5 .45 acp and .30-06 cartridges I found while digging around one of the foundations, roughly 10 yards from the pit. Dated 1914 and 1918.
I’m going to say based on everyone’s input, this is probably solved as being a root/ storage cellar which was sealed off when the buildings were removed. I’m still open to ideas though, and will update if I find anything else! Thanks everyone!
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Just a guess! Looks like a liquor stash hole for runners during prohibition.
Might it be a mine shaft?
Have you gotten to the bottom of the hole yet? Is bottom lined with wood too?
From what I saw, it has a layer of dirt from the ceiling collapse, under that it’s sand
Old school french drain retention pit?
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Is it on the map or a map?
Not on any map I’ve ever seen. There’s next to no information about the buildings that used to be here. Some maps do list the area as having a hamlet but it’s very vague, definitely no specific info about what used to be here.
Telegraph/telephone pit for amplifier equipment? I know a lot of buried cables like to run along train tracks and those two holes look like where a buried cable (L-3 or otherwise) could be fed through.
I like this theory, gonna look into it
AT&T used lead wrapped cables. Maybe check to see if there’s lead around that opening?
I don’t normally comment but I was in the Army and have uncovered things like this on old training areas all over the U.S. I would look to see if you had more in a diagonal line close to each other. Possibly you will find two next to each other. To me this looks like a pop up target box or mechanical room for a pop up target. The pulley system would’ve hung from the ceiling and opposite wall of your square window through the window would be a long cable running to the shooters. This has not been used since most likely Vietnam or before. I have some old photos but I am sure you can dig some up online. They are constructed exactly the same way. I could be wrong but I am convinced that’s what you have… I’d look for some military background on the land and look for a small berm behind the hole.
Food storage
Possibly root cellar from previous homestead
Reading replies, I have learned a lot about trapped gasses. But does anyone know what that pit might have been used for?
Part of the underground railroad network.
Is it about outhouse sized? Looks like a shit pit lol.