I thought the 'lost city' near my town was just local legend...

A team from the state university started digging last fall and found pottery shards and foundation stones dating back 800 years. They published the carbon dating results online last week, and now I'm looking at the photos of actual walls under that field. Has anyone else had a local story turn out to be real?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannahhayes19d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, didn't they find foundation stones? Those are usually man made, so carbon dating wouldn't work on them. They must have dated organic material found with them, like charcoal or old wood. Still, that's so cool your local legend was true. What was the story people used to tell about the place?

karen_nelson409d ago

My uncle used to tell a version of that hermit story. He said the man was a deserter from the War of 1812 who just wanted to be left alone. It's wild how these little bits of charcoal can prove a whole person's life happened. Makes you wonder what other local tales are waiting to be checked.

piperr5818d agoTop Commenter

Yeah exactly, they found charcoal bits stuck in the dirt between the stones. The story was always that this old hermit built a cabin there after some big war, but everyone just thought it was a campfire spot. Turns out the charcoal was from his fireplace.