July 8, 2010

Civil War-Era Diving Bell Once Used For Gold Hunt Is

Now On Display In Georgia

By Carolyn Crist

Gainesville, GA (AP) A piece of history left Gainesville 135 years ago, but now it’s back.

A diving bell, the only one of its kind still left from the Civil War, was unearthed from the Chestatee River decades ago and is finally being restored before it is displayed in downtown Dahlonega.

Usually found in port towns such as New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston, S.C., the diving bell was used in Dahlonega in 1875 to mine gold at the bottom of the river. The object, which measures 8 feet high, 15 feet long and almost 6 feet wide, allowed divers a place to breathe under water while skimming river bottoms.
Historians have compared the design to turning a glass upside down in water, which creates a pocket of air at the top.

``It’s a very rare piece of Civil War-era technology and the only one surviving of its kind,’’ said Chip Wright, project manager and preservation planner for the Georgia Mountains Regional Commission. ``This diving bell should never have been here. It’s a good thing because that’s why it has survived.’’

During the metal drives of World War I and World War II, bells of this type were melted down and used by the military, he said.

``This was lying on the bottom of the river and forgotten for all these years,’’ he said. ``You can read about these in books and see drawings, but this one is even more unique because it was customized to serve in a gold mining operation.’’

Photo: Underwater Archaeologist Chris McCabe in the diving bell. The bow of the bell is to the left. Inset shows original red lead paint on the interior.
(C) Georgia Dept. of Nat’l Resources

Philologus Loud, a Dahlonega inventor and entrepreneur, was doing business in New Orleans when he came up with the idea to use the bell to search for gold. The Benjamin Mallifert bell model, which includes two hatches and a pressurized air-lock system to create a pocket of air under water, was part of the salvaging ship named The Glide that scanned the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers.

Loud bought the bell when the ship was converted to a package steamer. The bell was loaded onto a rail car and reached the end of its rail trip in Gainesville, where it was loaded onto a Southern Express wagon and toted to Dahlonega.

In 1983, local gold miners decided to pull out the object that fishers had noticed.
``The gold miners knew what it was right way,’’ said Anne Amerson, a Dahlonega historian who has studied the bell for years. ``I didn’t see it until 1990, and we still haven’t figured out everything about it.’’

Amerson and historian Chris Worick found old newspaper clips about the bell and a ship used on the river in 1875 and 1876. The boat sank, and the last article found said officials suspected sabotage.

``The next few issues are missing, so we don’t know if anything else was reported,’’ she said. ``People from far away started getting interested, and we decided to figure out what to do with it.’’

The bell sat on the side of the river until 2003 when new property owner Birch River Golf Community asked a local metalworker to repair the top and paint it. The bell was later moved to a nearby service road by new owner Achasta, the newly renamed residential golf community, until June 10.

``It was sitting there beside the maintenance area, and Achasta recognized the value of the bell and that it belonged to the community,’’ Amerson said. ``They agreed to donate it to the city, and the city council voted to place it somewhere within walking distance of the square.’’

The bell will be placed in a pavilion constructed in Hancock Park, located one block off the Dahlonega square. Last June, Amerson and Worick created a committee to decide what to do with the bell and in April named Wright, a maritime archaeologist, to oversee the conservation of the bell and submerged ship.

``Since the bell has been sitting out and exposed to the elements for so many years, we decided it should be stabilized and studied in great detail,’’ Wright said.

The bell was sent to Mike Cottrell in Gainesville, and a team is welding, painting and doing minor sandblasting to get the historic artifact back in shape.

``Being visionary, Mike Cottrell drew up a lifting device that we created in a few days to lift the bell onto a flatbed trailer,’’ said Steve Katona, who is heading up the conservation project under Cottrell. ``It’s a big joint effort, and we’re being very patient. We want the end results to be perfect.’’

Wright has been documenting the process on Facebook, posting pictures and updates to the ``Chestatee River Diving Bell’’ profile.

He’s also adding updates about the newest project, investigating the sunken ship that held the bell.

On May 22, Wright, a diver, located the wrecked ship under water.

``It’s buried under sediment. The water of the Chestatee River is so cold, which gives a great degree of preservation,’’ he said. ``The best place for it to be for now is where it’s at because the river has taken care of it all these years.’’

Thought Wright doesn’t plan to raise the ship above water, he wants to find the dimensions of the ship and figure out how it operated with the bell. Once the bell renovation is complete, the community is holding a fundraiser event July 31 at the Cottrell Ranch barn to raise money for the pavilion that will house the bell.

``We’ll have the bell fully stabilized and on a custom trailer at the event so people can look at it,’’ Wright said. ``We don’t have time line yet for when it will go in the square. The city is working out the details, but in the meantime it will be stored in a safe that is dry.’’

Yes, You Can Call Him ‘Sugar:’ Dr. Pepper

Orders The Real Stuff For Its 125th Anniversary

By Emily Fredrix

New York (AP) Dr Pepper is prescribing some sugar this summer in honor of its 125th anniversary, the latest in a series of moves by soda makers to temporarily swap out high fructose corn syrup.

The spicy soda made by Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. is rolling out Dr Pepper ``Made With Real Sugar’’ this weekend through early September.

Cans and bottles will feature old logos in the company’s deep red, and colorful designs with lions and bright swirls of color harkening back to the 60s. Popular phrases such as ``I’m a Pepper’’ also appear.

There are six different can designs. The company wanted to bring back the sugar version to help highlight its past, which dates to the creation of Dr Pepper by pharmacist Charles Alderton in Waco, Texas, in 1885.

Manufacturers are testing sugar drinks as people’s appetite for them increases, as some become concerned about high fructose corn syrup. Though they’re nutritionally almost identical and equally caloric, some consumers believe corn syrup is less healthy than sugar.

They’re also racing to come up with natural, no-calorie sweeteners and reformulate their beverages, though they haven’t been able to apply that to major soft drink brands yet.

Last summer, rival PepsiCo Inc. launched real sugar versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew, calling them ``Throwback’’ and using old packaging designs. Pepsi Throwback was so popular the company brought it back for a brief time in the winter. It declined to say what the drink’s prospects are for the future.

Coca-Cola Co. offers a kosher version of Coke that uses sugar (look for bottles with yellow caps), often available around Passover. Mexican-made Coca-Cola, which also uses real sugar, can sometimes be found in the U.S., and fans pay a higher price for it. One Dr Pepper bottler, Dublin Dr Pepper, has been making the soft drink with sugar since 1891, in the drink’s home state of Texas.

The industry switched to high fructose corn syrup in the 1970s as a cheaper alternative to sugar, said Gerry Khermouch, editor of Beverage Business Insights.

There seems to be growing demand for it, as evidenced by Pepsi’s success with Throwback, even the second time around, he said. But drink makers are also wary of sending a message that there’s anything wrong with high fructose corn syrup.

``In some ways their worst nightmare is that this thing sells through the roof, because then that’s telling them something about how consumers feel about their product,’’ he said.

Photo: Old Dr. Pepper bottle with made with ‘Imperial Pure Cane Sugar’ on the label.

NC’s ‘Mother Vine’ Recovering From Poison

Manteo, NC (AP) A massive grapevine that may have been growing on North Carolina’s coast since the 1500s is recovering after being sprayed with a powerful weedkiller.

Multiple media outlets reported the scuppernong grape vine known as the Mother Vine, located on Roanoke Island, was sprayed by a contractor working for Virginia-based Dominion Power. ``From what I saw, this was just basically a lack of common sense,’’ said Donald Hawkins, owner of Vineworks in Duplin County, who was called in to help save the vine.

The vine’s crime: a single strand about as thick as an electric wire had climbed a few feet up a nearby power pole. So a contract employee hired to spray vines that were encroaching on power poles sprayed it with a herbicide whose label warns against using it on grape vines.

``We’re just sick about it,’’ said Chuck Penn, a Dominion spokesman. ``It’s something that never should have happened.’’

Jack Wilson, who has cared for the vine since he bought the property where it grows in 1957, first noticed the vine had brown areas in late May. He said he wasn’t contacted for permission to spray on his property, where about 10 feet of a hedge has died and three limbs of a pecan tree died. ``It was not just this vine,’’ Wilson said. ``It’s the whole north end of the island.’’

The contractor was trained and licensed but made a mistake, said Dan Oberlies, a senior vice president with Dominion. Dominion hired an expert from Virginia Tech to inspect the plant and recommend treatment. After a few weeks of daily watering, regular fertilizing and pruning, Wilson and the experts think the vine will survive. But the family won’t eat or harvest the grapes this season, just to be safe, Wilson said.

Historians think the vine was alive when the first Englishmen explored Roanoke Island in the late 1500s. Scuppernongs are a type of native muscadine and were the first U.S. cultivated wine grapes. Cuttings from the Mother Vine have become part of a vineyard in Duplin County that produces a popular scuppernong wine.

Family Receives 30 Eagle Scout Badges

77 Years After Man Earned Them

Mount Sterling, IL (AP)Raymond Bullard worked hard to earn the merit badges to become the an Eagle Scout in 1933. But with money tight during the Great Depression, he couldn’t afford to buy the badges.

``Physically having those merit badges was pretty low on the priority list for him,’’ said Harold Bullard, Raymond Bullard’s son. ``Earning them was the only thing that mattered, not having them.’’

It was Scouting that mattered to Bullard, a Mount Sterling businessman and the owner of O’Neil’s Store for many years.

``He played a really important role in Troop 11, not just as a Scout but as a leader,’’ said Donna Coultas, fundraising secretary in the Boy Scouts of America’s Mississippi Valley Council. ``He helped shape a lot of boys who are now Eagle Scouts.’’

To honor Bullard and this year’s 100th anniversary of Scouting, the Bullard family decided to present him with a sash and the badges he earned so many decades ago. ``The sash and badges were going to be a surprise,’’ Bullard’s brother-in-law Bob Volk said.

Plans called for making the presentation June 14, 77 years and 77 days after Bullard pinned on his Eagle Medal. Sadly, Bullard died May 30 without seeing the sash.

``Dad wasn’t one to make a fuss,’’ Harold Bullard said. ``He didn’t want anybody going out of their way for him. He was happy to do anything for anybody else, but he wasn’t worried about people doing things for him. Scouts ``get a card with each merit badge, and he had kept those all the years,’’ Coultas said. ``A lot of the badges he had earned were no longer available. We tried to give a merit badge comparable to what he would have earned.’’

Bullard earned more than 30 badges. Eagle Scouts in the 1930s needed 21, with 11 required, according to the Eagle Scout Resource Center at www.eaglescout.org.

``Dad had his priorities right in life. He was one of the most selfless people. A lot of people benefited from him, and he wasn’t worried about any recognition for it. We could all be a little bit more like that.’’

Since 1932, 57 Mount Sterling Scouts have attained the rank of Eagle, and countless others have reaped the rewards of the Scouting experience, thanks in part to Raymond Bullard.

``All the boys who have been through the program through the years held such a fond place in his heart,’’ Harold Bullard said. ``He loved seeing the boys benefit from a great program.’’

Bullard served on the troop committee for many years, planning the troop activities, and he saw many of his family members get involved in Scouting. Harold Bullard, who was more active in 4-H than Scouting as a youth, now is a scoutmaster, drawn into the program by his own son’s participation.

``I thought that the public ought to know a little bit about what this one family has done,’’ said Volk, who was never a Scout himself but helped many with badges to attain Eagle rank, including his two sons and two of his grandsons. ``You’ve got a moral obligation to make (the world) a better place, to leave your little mark if you can. We felt we had an obligation to help.’’

Renovated Ripley’s Odditorium Reopens

San Francisco (AP) The Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium in San Francisco has reopened at Fisherman’s Wharf after a $5 million renovation.

New additions to the attraction, which reopened Wednesday, include the Marvelous Mirror Maze, a candy shop where visitors can buy candy by the pound, and more than 70 new interactive and hands-on exhibits.

Oddities in the collection include a wedding dress made from toilet paper and a ball of hair weighing 167 pounds. But the Odditorium also has a new emphasis on the Bay Area, with artifacts related to local history and icons, including a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge made from a single toothpick, the restraint chair from the gas chamber of San Quentin Prison, and a car in which an earthquake survivor spent 89 hours under tons of rubble before being rescued following the 1989 quake.

The Mirror Maze challenges visitors to navigate a course that appears to be filled with dead ends amid 200 mirrors in 2,000 square feet.

Ripley’s grew out of a newspaper series called Ripley’s Believe It or Not, compiled by Robert Ripley, who was born in Santa Rosa, Calif. Ripley joined the San Francisco Bulletin as a cartoonist in 1909 and moved to the San Francisco Chronicle until 1912, when he moved to New York.

Ripley’s, located at 175 Jefferson St., opens daily at 9 a.m. It closes at 11 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and at midnight Friday-Saturday through Labor Day. Admission is $18 for ages 13 and up, $10 for 5-12, with additional admission to the Mirror Maze of $10 per person (combination tickets, $23 or $15 for kids).