For eight years, excavators at Utah's old Camp Floyd have been discovering pre-Civil War military buttons, cannonball fragments, lead bullets and percussion caps.
This year, a group of sixth-grade volunteers found something different - a child's shoe and a marble.What was a child's shoe - or rather the sole of a child's shoe - doing in a trash heap at what was once the largest military base in the nation?
"For a long time, we have suspected that some of the officers' families were allowed to come to live at Camp Floyd," says Dale L. Berge, a Brigham Young University professor of archaeology and anthropology who directs the dig at Camp Floyd. "Even though military records kept in the early days of the camp claim that women and children were not allowed to live here, we have heard conflicting reports. But we have never found any evidence to back up these rumors . . . until now."
Along with the child's shoe, the excavators found the sole of a woman's shoe. These three new artifacts - the two shoes and the marble _ will add one more chapter to the camp's history. "Ironically," says Berge, "it was a group of children who discovered that children once lived here."
Working side by side with professional archaeologists, children have been visiting the camp for years. Sitting among rows of dirt mounds where the camp's 200 buildings once stood, they learn about Col. Albert Sydney Johnston and the 3,500 soldiers who once lived at Camp Floyd.
In 1857, President James Buchanan sent the Army of Utah to subdue the reported "Mormon Rebellion." However, by the time Johnston and his men arrived, the president had changed his mind about the Mormons and canceled the army's mission, but he did not instruct the soldiers to return.
So the army marched through Salt Lake City to Fairfield, about 25 miles west of Lehi. During the army's three-year stay in Cedar Valley, it never engaged in combat, but it did profoundly affect Utah's economy, says Berge.
"In fact, we are discovering that the army actually was an economic salvation for the territory of Utah. The soldiers immediately hired local blacksmiths, carpenters and masons. They bought fruits and vegetables from the neighboring farmers. And, interestingly enough, they set up contracts with the LDS Church's lumber mill and Brigham Young's lumber mill.
"Most important, they paid for these goods and services with money, providing Utah's pioneers with the hard currency they so desperately needed."
The small Mormon pioneer village of Fairfield was transformed overnight. "It became one of those typical roaring, wild places of the West," says Berge, "with a combined military and civilian population of 7,000." It was the third largest city in Utah and contained more saloons (17) than were located in the entire territory.
While Berge is always amazed at how interested the students are in the history of the camp, he says their enthusiasm more than doubles when handed a pick and shovel.
Sharlee Doxey, a sixth-grade teacher at Welby Elementary in South Jordan, says half her students leave the dig wanting to become archaeologists "when they grow up." Last year was the first time she took a group out to the camp, and she quickly noted that it was the perfect way for her students to conclude their study on archaeology.
"We do a miniature dig at school with artifacts that I hide, but this is the real thing _ and the students know that," says Doxey. "It is so exciting for them to go to the Camp Floyd Museum (located across the street from the dig site) and then later actually uncover some of the same artifacts they saw in the museum.
"I have a philosophy that the more kids experience, the faster they learn and the better it sticks. With this kind of experience, it's no wonder why our kids have such positive feelings toward archaeology."
Cecilia Horner, a sixth-grader in Doxey's class, was amazed to find "really neat things _ things you just don't find on the side of the road."
Her classmate, Ryan Davis, found a button, rusted nails, several bones and hundreds of egg shells. "The best part," he says, "is that no one has ever seen this stuff except you . . . well, no living people."
Sitting in the State Park by the historic Stage Coach Inn, the students described the artifacts they had found and the possible stories behind them. One boy had found the bowl of a porcelain pipe, which he said probably belonged to an enlisted soldier, "because the enlisted men were usually immigrants who brought with them their European pipes."
How did an amateur archaeologist know this? It's all part of Berge's philosophy of what a field school should be. He doesn't want the dig to be simply a "treasure hunt" but a real excavation experience. Hence, the students help identify their finds and place them in the right category.
He also emphasizes that each artifact is important, right down to the egg shells. "People always ask me what our most significant find is, and I can't tell them because all of this is important to the history of Camp Floyd. Sometimes a pipe with a man's initials on it will open up a whole new story."
For every day of digging, Berge and his team will do about eight days of research. Berge has visited the National Archives in Washington, D.C., five times to glean information from the military's records on Camp Floyd.
What he is uncovering is a fascinating story, one that may involve a conspiracy.
"The total cost for this expedition was $40 million, much of which went to a contracting firm whose owners turned out to be Southern sympathizers," explains Berge. "Several of the other key players at Camp Floyd, including Secretary of War John B. Floyd, who the camp is named after, and Col. Johnston, who was killed in the Battle of Shiloh, also turned out to be Southern sympathizers."
While these are just pieces of a rather complex puzzle, Berge finds it interesting that just three years before the Civil War, the Union Army was pumping millions of dollars into the Confederacy.
This is what's exciting about historical archaeology, says Berge.
"There is always a story to be found. This is why it is so important that Camp Floyd be excavated under the direction of professional archaeologists, who care more about the history they are uncovering than the worth of the artifacts.
"Fortunately, Marvin Carson has graciously allowed BYU to excavate his land, where much of the mile-long camp was located," says Berge, who points out that the BYU team has already excavated a headquarters building, two barracks, a mess hall and several garbage dumps and is now working on the Sutler's store.
After each building has been excavated, the site has been covered back up in order to prevent vandalism. "We hope the state will someday purchase this land and turn it into a state park," explains Berge. "And that's exactly what this should be is a historical park. When you think about it, most of Utah's historical sites are just a collage of historical buildings, much like Pioneer Village. But this would be a real historical site where future children - even after the dig is completed - can come and experience a segment of their cultural heritage."