Marin native Bottle Ned digs for historical artifacts of American West for his YouTube channel

Sep 07, 2023

Courtesy of Ned Clarke

Ned Clarke shares the treasures he finds in unexpected places on his popular YouTube channel.

Courtesy of Ned Clarke

A collection of Ned Clarke's antique bottles that he's found.

Courtesy of Ned Clarke

Ned Clarke got hooked on digging for artifacts while he was a student Mill Valley Middle School.

Courtesy of Ned Clarke

Ned Clarke considers his YouTube channel of his finds as "historical education through visual storytelling."

What many see as trash, Ned Clarke sees as treasure. Traversing the western states, the Marin native searches through piles of excavated mud and dirt for remnants of the buried and unforgotten past, uncovering 19th-century soda and medicine bottles, pitchers, pot lids, brass doorbells, dolls and inkwells.

It's a process the historian and SAG actor showcases on his popular YouTube channel "Digging the Old West with BottleNed" where for the past few years he's shared the colorful history of the American West and shown the unique places he's discovered finds, from under a gas station to behind a Victorian mansion to under a 100-year-old steel factory. With thousands of followers, he considers it "historical education through visual storytelling."

His videos can be found at youtube.com/@BottleNed.

Q How did this interest begin?

A I was 5 years old. My grandpa brought me out to the beach by Blackie's Pasture. I was walking on the beach and there was this aqua bottle bobbing in the waves, washing up onto the beach. It had algae on it and a barnacle or two. It was an E&J brandy bottle. I picked it up and it sparked something in my imagination like, what was the story of this person? How did it get to this spot? It was an artifact of somebody's life and it had been altered and aged by nature. It was that combination that was really compelling. It captures a moment in someone's life.

Q How did the digging start?

A Mill Valley Middle School, where I went, was built on a landfill. I was about 12 and waiting for a bus. I was kicking the ground with my foot and a 1920s bottle popped up, a flavoring extract bottle. It was a lot older than I was used to finding and I started kicking more and I kicked up a 1910 bottle that said the name of a pharmacy embossed into the glass. I couldn't believe it. So, naturally, I stared digging with my feet by the closest bush and I later went back to my spot and there was a hole that someone had dug with a shovel. I pulled up a newspaper from World War ll that you could still read. That's when I was really just hooked.

Q How’d you get the nickname Bottle Ned?

A Back in college. I was in Santa Cruz and there was a pile of sandy dirt by the boardwalk that was excavated and I had found a couple of 19th-century inkwells. A guy walked up to me and said, "I’m Bottle Danny," and I said, "Well, I’m Bottle Ned." He was also looking for old relics.

Q Where do you find places?

A You hear about areas where there's going to be a project, where there's soil that's going to be excavated. Every once in awhile, archaeologists come to a site, do a dig and recover things, but a lot of material that gets unearthed gets hauled off to a landfill. It's a shame. Basically it's a quest to try to find some of that dirt and get into it. I stress that if you find something on public land, leave it. And no one should touch Native American artifacts; that belongs to them and it needs to stay in place.

Q What inspired the YouTube channel?

A I was digging for years without filming and then I came to a realization that this needs to be documented; there's a lot of education to be had. No one really is aware that there's so much being destroyed daily by progress, by building and excavation and changing the landscape. To be able to film it and document it, you can keep history alive.

Q What's a memorable thing you’ve found?

A A hair bottle from France. I was able to locate through social media the descendent from the guy who used the bottle from the 1860s. That was incredible for the family to have that. One time, I was driving on a freeway and I saw a tree that had fallen. I thought I saw a sparkle of glass sticking out of the tree roots. I went to the tree and sure enough, there was an old whiskey bottle sticking out a tree root, from the 1880s. I got a picture in my head of someone on their horse and maybe they tied their horse up to the tree, sat under it for some shade, had a drink and left that bottle there and it got buried. You never know where you’re going to find something.

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