THE HISTORY OF "RANDYS DIG" ALSO KNOWN AS THE
PECAN SPRINGS ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE
With having grown up in San Antonio I had been interested in Texas Archaeology since the early 60’s. In later years I found myself the owner of an import car repair shop in San Antonio, where I constantly used to ask my customers about any of their friends or relatives that may own property in the Hill County. After following hundreds of leads over the years (everywhere from Blanco to Uvalde), I luckily stumbled on this property in 1982. At that time it was just a plowed field, and was given permission to surface hunt. The first visits were very productive, and from that time until 1996 I dreamed of owning it. However in 1985, the 13 acres was sold to another party who I will call Mr. F. Mr. F erected a barn and a small home on the property and located them directly on top of the central burned-rock midden area (just as most Germans do in this part of the country). Anyway, in 1995 I finally had enough money (I hoped) to try and buy the property. But as things were at that time Mr. F was not interested in selling. Now of course it was acreage with improvements and would not be cheap even in 1996 money terms. Nevertheless, I hounded Mr. F for a whole year even getting him out of bed on Sunday mornings. The greatest day was in early January 1996 when we closed on the property and it was at last mine. I believe I am really only the third owner since the Indians were here- The original German family that settled here in the 1850’s, Mr. F and then me. The property is 80% surrounded by flowing water, lined with Cypress and Pecan trees, a beautiful and natural area for the ancients to have camped. I truly believe that this archaeological site has some of the finest artifacts that have ever come from the Central Texas. At this time I feel that only about 20 to 25% of the site has been excavated. And we only just recently found some new exciting features that are as yet untested but look very interesting. I hope that anyone interested will come out and have a look and decide for themselves.

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Presenting the Jim St John Collection







 

90% of these artifacts were dug by Jim St John here at Randys Dig in the past months.
He is without a doubt one of the luckiest diggers ever to turn dirt at this site.
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