May 17, 2008 5:29 pm US/Central
Students Search For World's Fair Relics
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
This week, famed archeologist Indiana Jones returns to the big screen, but amateur archaeologists are already searching for clues to the past in Chicago. Saturday, a group of students sifted through the dirt near the Museum of Science and Industry, searching for relics from the 1893 World's Fair. CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports on what they found.
Alongside the Museum of Science and Industry, it was something of a "eureka" moment.
Because what Elise MacArthur found was a label on a pipe that she believes is from the Columbian Exposition of 1893.
"I was digging. It's a sewage pipe. It says Standard Sewer," said MacArthur, an Egyptology student.
MacArthur is one of a group of University of Chicago students excavating a small portion of the more than 600-acre site of what 115 years ago was the largest fair the world had ever seen.
"The city says there were no pipes here, that there were no utilities. So these aren't active utility pipes, they're actually historic utility pipes," said graduate student Megan Edwards.
Instructor Rebecca Graff came up with the idea for the first ever excavation of the famed White City. She says it seemed appropriate for a fair that spawned so many firsts, including the Ferris Wheel.
And if you think the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier is big, the one from the fair was more than a hundred feet taller and carried nine times as many people -- people who left a lot of things behind, including possibly a clay tobacco pipe that was found at Saturday's dig.
"We're thinking it was probably sold as a novelty item at the fair," said student Elizabeth Leiserson.
The White City was primarily made of plaster-based stucco. Students struck one area that had a lot of plaster in it. The plaster was not very fire resistant and much of it burned in 1894.
"We know that some of the buildings at the end of the fair were burned down, probably because of an arsonist," said student Sarah Pickman. "So these pieces are just evidence of the buildings that used to be in Jackson Park burning down."
But while the White City became ash, one thing has remained constant A fair area that ended more than a century ago continues to draw visitors and interest.
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