EVANSTON — The speaker at the Sept. 5 Uinta County Museum Brown Bag Lunch series was Warren Borton, author of the book, “Wyoming Bottles, Crocks and Collectibles: 1868–1930.”  Borton, a native of Wyoming has spent decades collecting and researching Wyoming history through bottles and stoneware.

His 246-page hardcover book tells the histories of the pioneer businessmen and women who created Wyoming’s first saloons, drugstores, and bottling works. The bottles, crocks and collectibles such as trade tokens, medicine dose cups, beater jars and calendar plates of the 1910 era are all shown in color photographs.

“I grew up on a 600-acre ranch on the Indian reservation,” Borton said. “I wandered all over that land and I started finding bottles in an old log cabin on the ranch. When some guy offered me $1 per bottle, that began my collecting of bottles.”

Today, Borton finds most of his bottles in people’s back yards and in old outhouses. He said he will knock on a stranger’s door and explain what he does and ask if he can dig a hole in their yard with promises to fill it in and replace the sod when he is done. Most people will accommodate him, and he will offer to give them some of his findings.

As Borton’s wife, Chris, operated the slide presentation which showed different examples of bottles, he explained to the audience how he determines the dates on bottles. First, he said, you look at the bases and the tops of the bottles. Before 1870, the maker would put a wad of clay on the base to indent it to keep it level and, after 1870, the bottles had smooth bases.

The tops of the older bottles were a piece added on and after 1906 they had an automatically made top. Borton said that the embossing on bottles also provides dating tips as does different colors. Writing and embossing on bottles make them more valuable.

The color purple is made by adding manganese to the glass and then setting the bottle in the sun, which would turn it purple. Borton said that is the only bottle that changes color. He said they would use gold in the glass to make a ruby red bottle and iron ore for other colors.

The oldest Wyoming bottles were the territorial bottles made from around 1868 to 1872, before Wyoming gained statehood in 1890. Territorial bottles probably go for around $100-$150, Borton said.

“It is always about supply and demand when it comes to value,” Borton said.

Pictorial drug store bottles are worth more as the history is easier to trace. Unique medicine bottles were made, such as putting ridges on the top of bottles that held poison to avoid mistakes in grabbing the wrong bottle at night.

Borton showed slides of Wyoming soda pop bottles that were made from 1880 to 1940. One of the bottles on the slide was a 1930 Chief Washakie soda pop bottle that was made in Worland and Thermopolis. Only eight towns in Wyoming had Hutchinson soda pop bottles.

In Evanston, Fearns and Bodine made Hutchinson soda pop bottles. Some of the early Hutchinson soda pop bottles had a cap with a wire fastener.

Most of the Wyoming whiskey flasks Borton found were in Green River and Sheridan. Borton said he has 50 crock jugs and one from the Old Liquor Co. from Evanston. The reason whiskey jugs are so rare, Borton said, is because when prohibition came along the police would bust the whiskey jugs when they found them.

As Borton showed slides of bottles and jugs, he shared history and stories of the era. He said he loves researching about the maker and the history surrounding the bottles he finds and has included those findings in his book.

“I have spent 40 years digging for bottles. You can find all kinds of things when digging,” Borton said. “Once I found a 400-year-old skeleton while digging here in Evanston and had to quit digging at that site. I’ve also found safes, guns, dishes and a variety of objects.”

When asked what he does with the items he finds, Borton said he either keeps them or sells them to pay for his travel expenses.

“Sometimes you get lucky; a friend of mine was digging in an old saloon outhouse and found 15 $20 gold pieces stuck to his shovel,” Borton said. “Usually, bottles found on the east coast are older and more valuable.”

Borton was asked about the value of old canning jars and he answered that he was not an expert on that type of bottle but one could find information online and in history books.

He was asked a final question about why he keeps digging, and he responded, “Remember on Christmas day how excited you were when you saw all those packages and didn’t know what was in them and just couldn’t wait to tear into them? That is how I feel when I’m digging. I never know what I will find. Part of why I do it is I love history; it’s a passion to see what I’ll find.”

Instead of drawing a ticket for a museum prize at the end of the presentation, this time old bottles were lined up on a table and each attendee was told they could take one.