Stumbling across history

ROCHEPORT, Mo. -- The excavation of a blacksmith shop at one of the most famous farms in Missouri is a boisterous effort to unearth a part of Boone County's past.

But as Michael Sapp found out, discovering that history can be a little painful.

Further inspection on that spot yielded an intact horseshoe, just one of the numerous finds made this time around at the site of Lexington, Boone County's first European-American settlement.

William Switzler's "History of Boone County," published in 1882, says Oliver Parker had a store with post office on the site in 1819 until abandoning it in 1834. Missouri became a state in 1821. Columbia's origins date to 1819, when the settlement of Smithton was platted. Two years later, Smithton became Columbia.

This is the second year in a row part-time archaeologists have converged on William Heffernan's farm, which gained renown in the mid-1800s when it was designated "a model farm."

Heffernan's daughter, Lisa Weil, learned about the farm's bond with the town site while working at the State Historical Society of Missouri.

"It's been farmed for so many years, the top 6 or 8 inches, that things are pretty messed up," Heffernan said. "But it's fun when you start getting down below and start finding things."

David Sapp, former president of the Boone County Historical Society, said besides the group's appreciation of "heat and humidity," the dig resumed this year because they were excited by what they found.

"We always envisioned on this project it was going to be a more than one-year kind of thing, that if we could figure out how to do it, we would extend it and learn more," David Sapp said.

The last time around, diggers found artifacts including a rubble pile that was determined to be remains of a building. The volunteers found fragments of brick and stone, window glass, iron and more than 2,000 square-cut nails.

"It appeared what had happened was that there had been a building in that immediate area that had been torn down and scavenged," David Sapp said. "And these were the pieces that were left over."

The group decided to focus their efforts this year on a blacksmith shop 550 feet from where they dug last year, with the goal of finding out how the two entities were connected. The blacksmith shop is not listed in the county history.

"There is no clue in" Switzler's book "about the shop or any larger settlement," David Sapp said. "So we're simply trying to determine now, as best we can, how big this place was, how significant it was, how long it lasted, if we can."

So far, the all-volunteer team unearthed little lumps of coal, a chain link and a railroad tie. The dig, which is sponsored by the Missouri Archaeological Society and the Boone County Historical Society, might resume in late summer or early fall.

Searching for buried historical treasure isn't necessarily a leisurely activity. Michael Sapp, a journalism student at Washington University in St. Louis, said the work -- lots of digging and lots of sifting -- can be frustrating.

But he said it's important to provide insight into the past, before places like the Columbia Mall or downtown Columbia became symbolic of Boone County.

"To imagine that there was somebody out here casting horseshoes is kind of interesting," he said.

As Columbia and the rest of Boone County expands, David Sapp said, historical relics that smaller communities would find significant get cast aside or buried, which makes it even more important to keep looking and learning about the county's past.

"We forget about sites like this in our progress, whereas some of the communities where you can see and go through many old buildings are the ones that are not growing," David Sapp said. "So I think we should be thankful for our growth, but we should try to preserve and learn these things. Because otherwise, they'll be totally lost."