In 2017, Philadelphia crews digging up Spruce Street hit water mains made of bored logs, laid around 1811; the city's last wooden pipe left service in 1858

A city worker operating a backhoe on Spruce Street in 2017 expected to find broken concrete and old cast iron. Instead, they found what looked like tree trunks and logs: water mains bored and buried around 1811, decades before the Civil War. The workers nearly tossed the logs in the trash, but a passerby stopped them.

A bike lane detour led to a 200-year-old discovery