Warren Borton
I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. As a child I explored every crook and cranny of our 600 acre ranch , plus all the land bordering ours. I spent a great deal of time playing along and in our creek. Just
off our ranch there was an old cabin which sat on the edge of creek. It was not long before I took the short journey to explore it. It looked old and spooky with its missing windows and dark interior. A young boys dream for adventure ! Little did I know how this one day would forever affect my life. I often wonder if I would have become a bottle collector if not for this one day. The interior of the old house had clothes and junk scattered in every room. It looked like a wind storm had gone through it! Just inside the front door was an old medicine bottle with a cork it in. And just beyond it lay another. They intrigued me somehow and I stuck them in my pockets; Mere unembossed 1915 pharmacy bottles but they started it all !! Upon returning home I found my father in the barnyard with a man who was buying hay. The fellow turned out to be an avid bottle collector who promptly offered me $1 each ! This was a fortune for a 10 year old boy on the 1960s . A dollar would buy a stack of comic books or twenty candy bars or ten bottles of soda pop! Over the next few years I dug around the old cabin frequently. I discovered the dump on the river bank. With the ashes went the bottles and it was easy digging for a young boy.I mined the bank for bottles and sold them to the collector until I could find no more. In the process, I too became a collector. I searched every place I could for old bottles but not being old enough to drive was a problem! As a teenager I met a bottle collector who was a dump digger as well as a privy digger. Once I got my own probe I was off to the ghost towns to learn how to use it. About this time I met Darrel Meyer who also was a bottle hound. We became partners and that was the beginning of a life-long friendship. Over the last 25 years we have dug countless privies all over Wyoming. Although we collected various types of bottles over the years, we became most interested in Wyoming bottles and crocks. This resulted in my authoring a Wyoming bottle book in 1988. The current edition is an updated 2003 version Warren remains one of Utah's most persistent diggers. Although he is a Utah resident, his pursuit is the rare bottles of Wyoming. You can generally find him scouting locations, getting permission and digging into long lost privies. Click here if you would like to contact Warren. |
Warren Displays his obsession proudly. He has many interests beyond rare Wyoming bottles. See his collection below. .