European immigrants flocked to Alabama by the thousands during the
late 19th and early 20th centuries to work in the
booming coal industry.
Look down on by locals.
These immigrants, primarily Italian, usually lived outside of the town
limits.
Today, Casey and I will be searching a mining community
built over a century ago for traces of their lost
history that are now being overtaken by nature.
Welcome to Little Italy.
So Casey assures me there's something right here in these
bushes.
I can't see it, but it's there.
I can see a bunch of rock walls over there
on that side.
So I know there's still stuff going on.
So we got to go straight this way.
That's right.
Let's do it.
All right, Show me what I'm missing.
This just shows you a lot of times people wonder
about how all of the dump sites in the areas
haven't been found or haven't been explored in years.
In our area, we got a lot of underbrush.
I mean, we're in the dead of winter right now
and you can see how dense it still is.
But look at the wall.
And then all of a sudden it's round.
So is this a cistern?
I don't know what that is.
There's steps up here that those steps and stones look.
Oh, there is steps straight up another circle up there.
I don't know what they had over here.
That's weird, man.
I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that.
Wow.
All right, I guess we'll keep following the trail of
rock walls.
Right?
All right, we're making our way up this little gully
way right here.
It's unreal the amount of modern trash here.
I mean, we're a good ways off the road, making
our way up the hill a little bit.
There was definitely a lot of something going on around
here.
Hey, there's your Yamaha gas tank.
So as we've been walking, these cisterns have been popping
up.
This is the first one that I've shown you.
At first, we didn't know whether they would be a
mine intake shaft, but the more I look at them,
the more I really feel like these guys right here
were just to hold water.
We did bring big magnets with us, so we're going
to toss in there here in just a second to
make sure there's nothing down in there.
This is in Bibb County, Alabama, and there was something
that went on around the turn of the century that
made Bibb County be called Bloody Bibb.
Lots of crime, lots of crazy stuff was going on,
and you never know when a murder weapon or something
like that would have been thrown right down inside of
one of these.
It would be pretty cool to find an old gun
or something in there.
All right, guys, we just dropped the magnet in here.
It doesn't seem to be very deep right off, but
that's not always a deterrent.
Look at all the hot rocks that stuck to that.
So Alabama's loaded with hot rocks.
Brandon is gold magnetic.
And no, I wish it was.
Bummer.
You know what it is, though, is safe.
So if there's a safe down there, you can pull
it up.
Good point.
Fairpoint.
So what we're going to do is we're just going
to make sure we cover every one of these the
best that we can.
And if I fall in, you're going to have to
come after me.
That's my America's Funniest Home videos.
Then I'll.
I'll come after you.
You got this.
Yeah.
I wish it was deeper.
It just makes me wonder if it's flooded in or
if it was always that shallow.
I mean, we're in a low valley bottom right now.
So the water table is a little different right here.
More hot rocks.
Explain to the audience what hot rocks are.
So I thought I felt something.
You get a bite.
I thought I felt like 1.
So whenever they mined a lot, it seems like a
lot of our stone in the area had like an
iron deposit through certain layers.
And when it comes to metal detecting or magnet fishing,
I've noticed that in almost every single waterway you're going
to pull up what we call hot rocks, which is
just the mineralized rocks.
It'll stick to the magnet.
Makes sense.
So they are ferrous material instead of non ferrous.
Going to break out the old machinist terminology for you.
Which just means you're magnetic and have iron inside.
I don't feel anything done in this one.
That's all right though, because we got like three more
to go.
So he's not wrong.
Let's go.
So these these kind of look like mill site, almost
like there could have been a water wheel right here
next to this little bitty through of water.
I mean, it doesn't like enough flow to me.
But if you turn around and look right here, it's
like a cellar.
You can see the rocks and you can walk right
up into it.
Obviously somebody in the 1950s dumped every single bottle that
they had around their house in here.
Yeah.
I mean, there's just you can't walk without the glass
crunching.
So I'm having to look at the bottles and it's
just kind of crazy how much stuff is here.
I mean, you look down here, man.
There's just bottles everywhere.
Most of it's not super old like that one, right?
There's an old ketchup Suncrest bottle.
Yeah.
I don't know what this was, Casey.
I like that little walkway thing.
Still here.
Yeah.
I mean, it's almost too narrow for a walkway.
Whoever built this, that I can guarantee that they're dead.
Yeah.
I mean, 100 years later, and we were just talking
about whether this was logged or not.
It's really hard to say that.
I would have thought if it had been logged, the
skidders would have crushed this notoriously in Alabama.
That is a real problem with history here, as it's
been lost to strip mining and to loggers.
So that's why we filmed this kind of stuff.
It may not be as exciting as some of our
greatest fine videos, but you know what?
This is the stuff that'll be gone right here.
I'm going to cross the branch, so I'm going to
look at that little foundation over there, too.
All right, We're across the branch.
Look at this thing, guys.
Holy cow.
Now this is cool.
Yeah, this is.
I mean, this stuff's definitely right around 1900.
The town was incorporated in 1901.
The mining business here halted in about 1976.
This site right here was done long before that, though
there were several waves they kept W blocked and alive.
The first one was World War One.
They did really good providing some of the iron, steel,
coal, all that kind of stuff, because there were coke
ovens here.
But then they died down and then World War 2
popped up.
That rejuvenated them for just a little while.
And then after World War Two, it was a steady
decline after that.
Looks like something's nesting in that hole right there.
That video, you're going out and put your hand in
it.
All right, you're ready.
Let's do this.
Here we go.
Blooper, blooper reel.
What's in there?
That's not you really going to do it?
I'm like, no, we got some dual camera actually going
right now.
I'm going to try to jump across this Creek.
Maybe it's not terribly muddy on the other side.
Let's see if I can do this live.
Sunk a little bit.
Is that your femur or is that your boot?
It's just my boot, thank God.
See these right here.
This is either.
Is that small gauge rail?
I can't tell.
Looks like it almost looks like full gauge rail right
there.
So the railroad apparently ran across right here.
I know y'all are not getting a really good visual
representation to the geography here, but we are on the
side of a mountain.
This right here to the bottom.
Believe it or not, it's about 50 to 75 feet.
You can see the water running and this is prime,
prime area for a coal mine.
And I think I'm standing on a real bed actually,
which would explain the amount of trash.
The industry that was here was just so massive.
It was supposedly over 8 square miles of mines here
and that's not necessarily what we're looking for is mines
today.
I think this is a real way Casey.
I do remember the railroad bridge.
We had a video a few years ago that's probably
straight ahead.
What's interesting though, is the amount of modern trash that's
here.
There's a lot of stuff from the 1950s, sixties and
70s thrown off at the hillside, so I don't know
what was up above it up there, but something was
going on.
So we're on the bottom side.
This looks like the railway up here.
Look at that right there.
I'm about to get down there and look in that
This rock with a green Moss on it is incredibly
slick.
So I'm going to be cautious on my way down
there to that, but that looks too cool to not
go look in.
All right, we're down here.
Look at that.
Wow, that's cool.
I don't think I want to go through there, but
while I was looking, look right there I see a
bottom of a bottle sticking out.
Looks like an old pick up wine.
Let's see if I can get over there without breaking
my neck on this slick stuff.
Nobody will probably believe this, but right there is that
bottle I was talking about.
I see it sticking out.
Oh wow, is it going to be modern?
No, that's old, but it's broken.
That gum it, that is old though, man.
Yeah, that still may come out with us and be
a real good cutter.
I don't know.
That's just cool because of the site this came from.
So we just picked up a bottle.
Long story, We're kind of laughing about what we thought
it said, but it says OZ up around the top.
That been a shoe Polish, you see.
It's got a little bitty faint purple hint to it
that's from exposure to sunlight.
It looks like it says Dungies.
And I was like, I've never seen one of those
where he was telling.
I was like, I've never seen one.
Let me see it.
It's not their fault.
It's not my fault.
It's their fault.
They need to get their their lettering a little bit
better.
The font style was wrong, but that is about 100
year old shoe Polish.
And then the green bottle that I found, this could
be all the way back to 1890.
I mean look how uneven the bottom is.
Even you can look how thick it is on one
side and not on the other.
This is crazy spot right through here though.
And like I mean there's pottery and stuff sticking out
of the wall like right there.
I mean it's just there's glass in here.
It's just a matter of if we can find any
old and whole stuff.
All right, guys, I see something embossed right up here,
literally on the surface.
Oh, God, it's broken.
But look at that.
It's a soda water, man.
Look, it's got the embossed stars on.
See, it says soda water, property of Coca-Cola Bottling Company.
Let's see where it was from.
West blocked in Alabama.
I've been a good one.
You know what, though?
That's still a really good cutter.
So we can cut and make this into a whiskey
glass.
I'll take it down to right where it says Coca-Cola
property of.
And that's worth keeping.
Man, that's cool.
Good.
Fine, dude.
Yeah, they're out here.
This hill right here has me out of breath, Guys,
it's steep.
Take a look right here.
That is a nice moral lean.
Would have been a competitor with Vaseline right on the
surface.
So a lot of you may be wondering why they
called this section Little Italy.
Well, around the turn of the century, between 1880 and
like 1901, whenever this town was incorporated, a lot of
the Europeans are industry interested in the industry that was
booming here.
And the vast majority of the immigrants that came were
Italian.
And these Italians were actually looked down upon worse than
African Americans, which is crazy.
And they had their their camps or their houses were
further outside of the town.
So the locals didn't have to deal with them.
They had their own churches, their own schools, all of
that kind of stuff, which is interesting.
And they were sitting here, you know, they were gotten
from Italy here.
Then they had to stay in this thing called dog
pens.
They literally had them caged up like animals for a
year to pay for their ride to America.
That's true.
Wow, that's crazy.
I mean, this area is full of history, but a
lot of it's sad.
And like that soda water brothel that we found that's
from the 1920s, that was probably on the tail end
of a lot of what we're talking about.
But that wine bottle bottle that we found by that
little bridge that we were at is probably right at
that era of where the Italians were first moving into
this area.
So definitely interesting.
This is just beautiful land in here.
Once we got past the trashy area where the houses
were.
But here we are on the other side of that
bridge that I climbed down to earlier and take a
look right there.
That was the other side of it, A lot of
work to build that berm right there for a railroad
track or a road or whatever it was.
That's a lot of work.
And things like this should be a park.
You know what I mean?
It really should.
Absolutely.
It should be a park.
And there's a friend of mine.
He's actually a descendant of the time.
His name's Mr.
Fernetti, and he's trying to get the funding.
We're going to try to do something to make this
some kind of park.
It needs to be, and the store needs to be
told.
Yeah.
And there again, thanks to Casey for getting their permission
for us to be out here filming this.
This is just one of those spots.
It's absolutely beautiful, you know, to see, but the history
is just so deep.
I mean, literally, I mean, there's a lot of stuff
that went on in these hillsides of Alabama that people
don't think about.
But we're headed to the next cistern slash, well, slash,
whatever it is, and we're going to try to drop
another magnet, just hit another little trash pile.
All that's in here are a bunch of lids and
stuff, which is kind of interesting.
I always keep these lids.
I know it's a highly, highly unlikely proposition that I'll
ever find the bottom side of these jars even at
thrift stores and stuff, but for some reason I keep
them.
I just can't stand to see them left out here
as I throw that one down.
Let's put it the backpack and keep on going towards
the cistern.
And you see right there that says matches.
Casey just picked this up right here.
This was like a matchbox holder.
These were pretty common.
They would have hung on the wall and you could
have just slid your box of Max matches down in
there and grab them out.
These are still pretty collectible.
That's cool.
We found the gun for the day.
We found the gun.
It's a Colt 45.
Oh, I see.
All that's left is the barrel.
That's all we got left.
We did find that milk bottle right there.
Busted out the backside.
4 mil chili, a spoon.
I'll crack the pieces.
That one froze.
You can tell the way the glass is broken.
If that froze with water in it, that's probably a
cool one.
Dang, there's a lot of trash all down this bank.
Check it out right here.
Nice wild and brick right in the Creek bed.
As we're walking down through here, lots of glass starting
to show up.
Mountainsides are surrounding us and believe it or not, even
following the water here, you can get turned around really
easily.
So we're looking for the other cistern and we're probably
within 100 foot of it.
But for some, we have no idea where we are.
We're winging it.
We're having fun.
Yeah, we're winging it right now.
Good news is we got water and we're both a
little too country to get lost.
So we've never been lost.
We didn't know where we're at, right?
What's this?
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like.
I told you we weren't lost.
We're close.
Just point me in the direction at Gatorade.
It should be this way.
There's one way or the other.
We'll find out.
Good Lord, I'm thirsty.
I don't know.
You know, February in Alabama, you would think that it
would be freezing cold.
And today it's about 75° and 95% humidity.
And that intern needs to have a backpack where he
can carry us out of here.
Wow.
So you see the giant hill right here?
This is a slag pile that's all backfill out of
a coal mine.
More than likely they're covering a coal mine up that
sat right here.
These right here are not rocks.
Those are cement pillars made and these were pull pillars.
They would have had a big eyelet on it, the
big iron cable and a giant motor.
And just so happens, it looks like the motor is
still sitting over here half buried, which is crazy to
think about.
Yep, look at that.
The motor that would have pulled those huge buckets out
is right there and half buried.
Well, that thing has seen better days.
Oh, there is more, more pull pillars.
You can see these guys a little bit better.
Hey, it's close enough for us Yeah, and that's concrete
Yeah, and there's your pillars right there.
So at this point, we have to be very careful
when you're dealing with a there's no kidding.
Somebody follows.
Somebody get help.
Yeah.
We, we try to leave a gap in between us.
We're walking and I get super close together.
Like you said, if one of us goes into the
shaft, at least the other one can go out and
find it.
If you're standing close together, you'll go right through the
bottom.
Then you're in a heap of trouble there.
Again, more pylons for this mine.
I bet you they were pulling it out right there,
and that's covering the original mine.
Say there was a whole big thing here, you know,
hold, and they probably pulled it straight.
My understanding is a vertical shaft, but I don't, you
know, you never know.
Yeah, that's super cool, though.
Finally we found it.
We kind of walked around in circles, but here's another
one right here, guys.
I'm going to climb over there.
We're going to drop a magnet in it and see
what's down in this hole.
If I had dated, I'd say at least turn of
the century.
Look how clear the water is right now, though.
Just go down there.
I mean it's hot enough.
I'm thinking about just jumping in for a minute.
I'm telling y'all like we are dying right now.
It is hot.
It's middle of winter.
All right, let's get the magnet out.
All right, here we go.
This one is a about a foot deeper it feels
like than the last one.
It's hard to tell if I'm on a root or
a limb.
A lot of times there is a lot of roots
down in there and limbs and logs from the storms
and debris because here in Alabama, we get a ton
of tornadoes.
So what?
What's something you would like to find in here?
You know, honestly, I think it'd be cool to pull
out something mine related because we know that the coal
mines are right here.
This is true.
Yeah.
It'd be cool to get, like an old Lantern or
a safe deposit box, you know?
You never know.
Oh, God, you see that?
What was that?
Something in there?
Yeah.
I think it's a big frog.
Are they magnetic?
That's not like there'll be an alligator.
Look how bad this one is.
Let's see here.
Nothing but hot rocks.
That is wild, man.
That frog's like man.
What in the world is this?
What hasn't happened?
It's either a frog or Anaconda.
Yeah, probably.
I feel like we're in the jungle right now yeah.
Tune back in after the commercial and let us know
what it what it really is.
Stay tuned.
Negative on this one.
Hot rocks.
I'm wondering if they're filled in.
It's very possible that this flooded and filled in, so
we got 3 foot of silt on top of the
good stuff.
But that's all right.
That's part of it.
We'll keep looking.
Find anymore.
There's more out here, but we don't know if we're
going to be able to find them today.
We're going to try though.
We're about worn out.
We're going to try out though.
We got this.
Yeah, it's about to rain too.
So I've been thinking about those, what I was calling
cisterns that were along that Creek and I'm wondering after
seeing the railway in there if those were actually holding
spots for water for the steam train, which makes sense
now that I'm thinking about it.
I'd love to hear from you guys though in the
comments below and let us know you thought about this
adventure.
If you'd like to see more adventures like this one
that are not necessarily out digging for treasures, but actually
exploring, let us know about that in the comments too
and we'll see you guys in next weeks video.