Another man's treasure: Buxton, North Dakota, man digs discarded pieces of history from outhouse pits

Jun. 1—BUXTON, N.D. — An old outhouse pit might not be the first place that comes to mind when searching for buried treasure. But for Tom Askjem, yesterday's toilets are a treasure trove of information that tell the stories of the past.

The 31-year-old from Buxton has made a career of digging bottles, dish fragments and other forgotten relics of the past in outhouse pits, many of which in the Red River Valley date back to the 1870s. He and his digging partner, Jake Cariveau, from East Grand Forks, travel across the country in search of discarded items and their long-lost stories.

One can learn a lot about the people of the past from what they threw away, says Askjem. In the 1800s and early 1900s, most people did not have garbage services, so anything that couldn't be burned was thrown in the outhouse pit.

"It's interesting to piece the puzzle together, more or less, of who lived there and what their lifestyle was like," he said.

In older pits, items that predate the homestead were likely brought there by homesteaders. The pits of rich families sometimes hold ornate dinnerware, while pits without a lot of items in them may have belonged to a poor family, or one that was living modestly. Sometimes, pits that date to the Spanish flu have more medicine bottles in them than older pits.

Askjem's experience living on an 1870s homestead sparked his interest in history and started his pit-digging career. His family moved from Grand Forks to the farm near Buxton, North Dakota, after Grand Forks' Flood of 1997.

"There were old wagons in the woods, the house had Victorian-era vibes and a lot of it was original, with the original door hardware and woodwork," he said. "So I just kind of got into the history."

Askjem dug his first outhouse pit on his family's farm when he was in sixth grade. He discovered the pit when his family was clearing the woods with a tractor, and unearthed stove ashes and glass.

"I remembered reading online about ashes being thrown over old outhouse pits to neutralize the smell, so I started digging," he said.

He spent the summer digging the pit on his family's farm, and then started asking other local landowners about digging in the outhouse pits and abandoned places on their farms. Now, he has dug out more than 1,300 outhouse pits across the United States, from coast to coast.

Cariveau went on his first dig with Askjem in 2016. They knew each other, and Askjem had told Cariveau about digging in outhouse pits. But Cariveau had written it off as a bizarre interest — until he accompanied Askjem on a dig.

"It kind of blew my mind when he started pulling out some of these bottles — they're completely intact — then everything just kind of clicked," he said.

Through years of experience and research, Askjem has learned how to identify what the different types of bottles may have been used for, and more than the items themselves, Askjem is interested in the stories they tell. The fragments of bottles he finds can confirm or add to stories about the places he digs.

"A lot of biographies about these pioneers don't always tell the full story," he said. "Sometimes I'll find pits packed full of liquor flasks or drugstore bottles, so sometimes these outhouses were used as a place to dispose of contraband, either by local law or opinion of the household, so to speak."

Cariveau says anything they dig up of historical value is offered first to local museums. Askjem and Cariveau keep a few items for their personal collections, and anything else is given to property owners or reburied.

In January, Askjem and Cariveau started a YouTube channel called

"Below the Plains,"

where they post videos of their digs and finds. The channel has approximately 4,720 subscribers, and their most watched video — a dig in Yankton, South Dakota — has more than 160,000 views.

Cariveau and Askjem started recording their digs two years ago, and Cariveau began putting videos together over the winter in 2021. He is surprised at how successful the channel has been.

"It took off faster than I expected," said Cariveau. "Obviously, it's gratifying to see your work paying off."

Askjem also has published two books —one about North Dakota soda bottles and the other about Nebraska soda bottles — and more are on the way. An ongoing book project has been documenting the earliest bottles made and used by companies in the western half of the United States from collections across the United States. He also is working on a book about a dig he completed at the site of Fort Pembina, in Pembina, North Dakota, and two other books.

Not everybody is happy with the efforts. Askjem says people sometimes think he is akin to a grave robber; some take issue with the fact that he does not have an archaeology degree; some might think the pieces of history should stay in the ground.

"I'm not a grave robber. I don't dig up burial mounds or anything like that," he said. "I'm focusing on outhouse pits from the pioneer era, and I always dig on private land with the owner's permission."

Plus, he says, if it stays in the ground, we can't learn anything from it.

"There's that kind of cliched saying, 'If we don't know where we came from, then we won't know where we're going,'" he said. "The most interesting thing for me is noticing how human nature hasn't changed."