School children attending the 4-H environmental education
program have been digging in
the dirt and coming up with history.

They owe it all to one bored boy.

"In the spring of 1989 I was teaching a forestry class
at Rock Eagle," said
Rick Espelage. "And a bored student kicked up a corked-neck
bottle."

Espelage is an education program specialist for the
University of Georgia Extension
Service. He works in the environmental education program at the
Rock Eagle 4-H Center near
Eatonton, Ga.

"The bottle turned out to be from the early 1800s."
Espelage said. "We
shifted gears and started to discuss archaeology and
history."

Shortly, the students found what turned out to be the
foundation for a log cabin built
about 1807.

Espelage approached the program coordinators and got
permission to include an
archaeology curriculum in the environmental education
program.

"We now have discovered 11 different features,"
Espelage said.

The finds include a log cabin, the main house, the kitchen, a
well, a privy, the dump,
wagon roads, a slave house, a carriage house, rock walls and
other features.

"The great thing about this project is the long time it
covers," Espelage
said. "The early log cabin was built by slaves around 1807.
The main house wasn’t
built until 1838. And the Scott family lived there until 1900.
That’s a long time to
study."

Almost 1,400 of the plantation’s original 1,500 acres are now
the Rock Eagle 4-H
Center.

"Giles Tompkins claimed this land through a land
grant," Espelage said.
"He met the Creek chief White Bird King to find out about
the eagle-shaped mound on
his land. Tompkins gave his word that none of his heirs would
ever destroy the
mound."

The Tompkinses stood by the promise. They later sold the land
to the federal government
so the mound would be forever protected.

"That is a great lesson for the students," Espelage
said. "It really
teaches them the power of a promise. A promise can even change
history."

More than 41,000 school children visit Rock Eagle each year.
Groups of them are now
reconstructing history with period tools Espelage has collected
from local farmers and at
flea markets.

"We have reconstructed the privy, smoke house and
carriage house," Espelage
said. "We have about 15 logs up at the log cabin, built by
fifth- through
seventh-grade classes who learned to hew logs with a
broadaxe."

When the project is completed, it will be a living history
farm. The main house will
include living quarters and an area to house the artifacts the
students excavated.

"Rick has helped the students excavate the site and
classify the items they find
just like real archaeologists," said Diane Davies, state
coordinator of the 4-H
environmental education program.

"He took a very small living-history section of our
program and turned it into
something phenomenal," she said.

The new living-history section includes the archaeology digs,
parts of the Natural
History Museum and pioneer-life classes.

"We work with old tools and split shingles. And in
spring we plant a pioneer
garden," Espelage said. "Just this year we added
chickens."

In the evenings, the students sit around the campfire and
sing pioneers’ songs.
Teachers in period dress tell pioneers’ stories.

The students have dug up more than the coffee grinder
handles, old jugs, spoons, forks
and harmonica parts. They’ve dug up some history they will never
forget.

And at Rock Eagle, they’re leaving behind an outdoor history
learning center that will
serve students for years to come.