Wood, charcoal and clinker from bedrock void (Becker Hole B35)

About This Material

Becker Hole B35 was drilled in 1967 on the edge of the clay-filled depression that the Becker program had found in the bedrock beneath the Money Pit. The hole passed through bedrock from 171 to 189 feet, then wood to 191 feet, and then dropped through a void for twelve feet to its final depth of 203 feet. From that void came fragments of wood, charcoal and clinker.

Clinker is the fused, glassy residue left when coal or another fuel burns at high temperature, as in a forge, a furnace or a boiler. Charcoal can enter the ground through a forest fire, but clinker points to fire under human control. Graham Harris and Les MacPhie, the geotechnical engineers who reviewed the drilling records, group B35 with Holes B24 and B25 as evidence of cavities or chambers in the bedrock containing traces of past human activity. The depression itself, roughly circular, about forty feet deep into the rock and somewhat wider than the Money Pit, was filled with gray or blue clay that David Tobias and Dan Blankenship took to be puddled clay placed to seal the shaft.

The record does not say which searcher or which period the material belongs to. Steam pumps and boilers were run at the Money Pit from 1859 onward, and material from above could have been carried down by collapses or by the drilling itself, so the clinker alone cannot date the void. No analysis or dating of the wood or charcoal from B35 appears in the published record.