Sisters work to bring forgotten history to light
CONCORD TWP — Along a stretch of Seven Hills Road, two sisters are spending their summer uncovering and documenting a forgotten piece of history.
The sisters are working together but digging into Butler County’s past for two different reasons. For Ashley Nagle, 23, documenting artifacts from the forgotten town of Modoc City is part of her master’s thesis project in archaeology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
For Tia Nagle, 14, helping her sister dig, brush dirt from bits of glass and wooden buttons and work the wooden and mesh soil sifter will help her achieve her Girl Scout Silver Award.
It’s hard to imagine that an oil boom town blossomed, thrived and died in the space of two years along this wooded stretch of rural road. Fifteen years later, few remnants remained.
But, according to Ashley Nagle, a study of newspapers such as the Petroleum Center Daily Record and some work with ground-penetrating radar confirmed the location of the vanished town.
Then it was just a matter of carefully digging in three sites to see what the trowels and brushes would turn up.
“Modoc City started in 1873 and was completely gone by 1890, so it was a pretty short timespan,” said Ashley.
“It was one of the largest towns in Butler County,” she said. Its growth was spurred by the sinking of nearby oil wells just like the ones around Oil City and Titusville.
“I believe it went from nothing to 75 to 100 buildings and a 150 people,” Ashley said.
“It had a bank, hotels, a blacksmith, a men’s store,” said the sisters’ mother, Lori Nagle.
But the substance that created the town also doomed it. Ashley said newspaper accounts she’d unearthed reported that an oil tank was hit by lightning in 1873. “The account said it created a river of liquid flame,” she said. A second fire a year later sealed Modoc City’s fate, and by 1890 very little remained.
Ashley read a January 1890 account from the Pittsburgh Gazette. “‘Modoc is now numbered with the departed, not a plank or a post left to show where it stood.’ I love old newspapers.They are so poetic,” she said.
But the sisters growing up nearby had heard of the town’s short life. And when Ashley was looking for a master’s thesis subject, she hit on trying to excavate some of Modoc City’s past.
Researching in old newspapers led to an approximate location. Then talking to their friends and landowners, Eric and Amanda Hillwig, helped narrow the search.
“He does metal detecting in these woods,” Ashley said. “He has found suspender clasps, a pocket watch and parts of a brass organ.”
She then got use of IUP’s ground-penetrating radar gear, and the results helped her pinpoint three likely sites, two in the woods off Seven Hills Road and another in a nearby field.
Excavations kicked off with a lot of volunteer help. Ashley staged a “Scouts Archaeology Day” May 14 to get local Scouts involved in the dig. Fellow IUP students also lent a hand.
That’s how Tia got involved. She said her mother said an archaeology dig was a perfect Silver Award project.
“It’s got to be a project with lasting impact,” said Tia, figuring helping her sister collect artifacts to bolster her master’s thesis would fit the bill.
“We started digging in May. We’re out here most every day,” said Ashley. Using trowels, whisk brooms and large kitchen spoons, the sisters and, on this day three of Tia’s fellow Girl Scouts, carefully draw back the soil layers seeking any debris that might point to a former structure.
Ashley said they have uncovered bits of glass, hunks of coal, pieces of pottery and an engraved pipe stem.
“We clean all the artifacts. Look up the markings to see if we can trace the manufacturers,” Ashley said.
She has done field work before, including one summer in Germany helping to excavate a downed B-24 from World War II.
“We should be done by the end of August. Then I’ll start to fill out the paperwork and write my thesis, ‘Archaeology of a Western Pennsylvania Oil Boom Town: Modoc City,’” she said. “Then I will have to defend my thesis, which won’t be too hard.”
Ashley said she hasn’t considered starting on her doctorate right away. She hopes to find work with a cultural restoration management firm, essentially companies hired to do an archaeological assessment of property slated for building or road construction.
Tia won’t be following her older sister’s career path into the past.
“I want to be an artist or a photographer. Or go into the military and work with police canines,” she said.
