Season 2
3. Discovered, Preserved, and Told - Episode 3 - Dr. Doug Scott
Transcript
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Dr. Doug Scott: Somewhat jokingly, my peers refer to me as the godfather of battlefield archaeology. Then John Albright from his-- as a historian from the Denver Service Center, was brought in to do the furnishing studies and he found in the archives the documents that said that all this stuff was being shipped into Fort Larned. And then the recovery of the personal artifacts I think is really fascinating.
Phil Grossardt: You're listening to Footsteps: The Fort Larned Podcast, the official podcast of Fort Larned National Historic Site. Join us this season as we examine how and why the National Park Service preserves both cultural and natural resources and how the stories within are discovered, preserved, and told. Enjoy this episode as we talk with Dr. Doug Scott about his experience in his extensive career as an archaeologist at Fort Larned National Historic Site and countless other sites.
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Ben Long: Well welcome Dr. Scott, we're glad to have you on. I'm really looking forward to hearing some of your experiences and I know our listeners are too. So, as we get started, why don't we-- why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience over the years, your experience at Fort Larned, all of that.
Doug: When I first started at Fort Larned in 1972, I was a young graduate student at the University of Colorado. The original archaeologist in, at the time I think it was Region 2, was a guy named Dr. Wilford Logan, and he had called my advisor saying, "Hey I understand you've got a couple of students who are interested in historical archaeology. Well, we've got a couple of projects that our people can't do at the Midwest Archaeological Center". And said, "Could you-- do you recommend these folks doing it?" And Dr. Bernest, David Bernest said, "Yes" and he put David Gillio, who was another graduate student on the Fort Union Trading Post project, and me on Fort Larned because I'm from-- originally from Independence, Kansas, so I spoke Kansas pretty well. I did what it today would be called, Cultural Resource Management but it then was called Restoration Archaeology, and we started with buildings 1 and 2, the Barracks. Well, I worked at Fort Larned as a graduate student 1972, 1973, and 1974, and then I completed my master's degree in '73 and continued working on my PhD and was able to use Fort Larned-- the information that came out of Fort Larned with this restoration archaeology to actually complete my master's and my PhD. So it was a fortuitous situation where there was more information coming out of the ground than just about the architecture and the artifacts of daily life there that allowed me to move ahead on things. And in August of '74, I took a job with the Oklahoma Historical Society as what then they called a curator, today would be a site manager, for Fort Towson Historic Site in southeast Oklahoma. Stayed there until late 1975 and then transferred to the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management where I worked in Southwest Colorado for 8 years or a little more than, and then moved to the National Park Service at the Midwest Archaeological Center where I completed my career in 2006 with 31 years of service.
Ben: That's awesome.
Doug: So-- and in the in the meantime I continued my interest in historical archaeology and in military archaeology particularly of the American frontier with the opportunity in 1984 to work at Little Bighorn Battlefield and kind of proud to say the techniques we used there, the results became rather standard for use in battlefield and conflict archaeology as it's become known since then. And somewhat jokingly my peers refer to me as the "Godfather of Battlefield Archaeology." And I like the term "Godfather." But it's just been a great thing since then. So, I've worked on over 60 battlefields and conflict sites, mostly in the United States, since then, I have done some-- volunteered on some projects in Europe, in England in particular. I also got into Forensic Archaeology, the recovery of human remains from conflict situations for humanitarian and human rights work. I did-- was secunded if you will, from the Park Service to the war crimes tribunals for former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. And then-- and did some other human rights work as well, so it's been a long career. Since I've retired, I have stayed just as busy doing teaching at the University of Nebraska and now at Colorado Mesa University on occasion, doing research projects, trying to get grants, doing a variety of things. And most recently I've been working-- assisting the National Park Service in the northeast region at Minute Man National Historical Park on the first day of the American Revolution, where we've been teaching metal detecting techniques and also I've been doing analysis along with a colleague of mine named Joel Bowie on the bullets from the first day of the Revolution that have been found along the British retreat line. So, you know, again, I stay busy and it's a good thing.
Ben: Yeah, that's awesome. Now one documentary that I know has featured you was talking about the archaeology you did at Little Bighorn and how it went into the ballistics, and finding out where each of the soldiers were, and where they were firing and that must have been a really cool project to work on.
Doug: It was one of those projects where we did not know for sure what we would find when we started there and it just-- it was incredible what happened in the first hour of that project with metal detecting, systematically going over the area we'd recovered over 100 objects. And by the end of the time, we were done we had over 5,000. Now that took several years of investigation to do, but the concepts of what we did was, it was pattern recognition, and cartridge cases and bullets scattered all over the area plotted, what we call piece plotting, just literally plotting everything precisely where it was found individually rather than as a-- some-- as we do in normal archaeology, digging rectangular or square holes, you often times lump things from that particular excavation unit together from whatever provenience it happens to be, however it's established. But we literally piece plotted every single object, and by itself that was interesting, but what we did do and what I did was apprentice myself to the firearms examiners at the Nebraska State Patrol where I was in Lincoln, Nebraska at the time. And learned the process of firearms identification and examination. And it requires a specialized microscope and such, but we were a-- because of the preservation at Little Bighorn, we were able to look at the firing pin impressions on the cartridge cases and identify individual firearms and multiple cartridges that were fired from the same firearm. And then that way, we could trace the people as they moved-- or at least the gun as it moved across and around that battlefield. And that was the first time that had ever been done on an archaeological site.
Ben: That's super cool.
Kristin Keith: I think we could have an entire season just interviewing you about all your different projects. But going back to the very beginning of your career, in the early 70's here at Fort Larned, did you have specific things you were looking for, or were you just asked to come out here and see what you could find, or was there a specific project?
Doug: Well, there were scopes of work identified for Fort Larned in the times that I was there, 1972, '73, '74, and that-- those work plans were established by the Denver Service Center in concert with the park as part of the restoration of the buildings there. And our goals were, you know, to find artifacts related to daily life, that would help on interpretation. Another goal was to find evidence of the missing architectural features, such as the porches on the front of Buildings 1 and 2, the Barracks, and later on as we moved around the different buildings, was we're literally to look for architectural-- missing architectural elements. And-- such as foundations of the porches, or piers for the porches, and various things like that. It-- over the 3 years I was there doing stuff intently-- intensely, the scopes changed a little bit to focus a little bit more on recovery of artifacts for interpretation, and to do-- look at several buildings, sites, that were no longer in existence like the Sutler's Store and the privies behind the Officers' Quarters, various things like that. Much of it was intended to mitigate the damage being done by the construction, so that was by and large what we were after and why we did this. But at the same time, there were opportunities to go a little further than that and look at some things that-- such as the privy locations behind the Officers' Quarters that would be interpreted later on and by building a structure over those sites to give that feel for that whole area as to what life was like in the in the 1870s there at Fort Larned, so there, that in part resulted in recovery of quite a bit of information. One of the things I did do-- Yeah, I'm sorry go ahead.
Kristin: I was just going to ask you if there was anything unexpected that you found, something you weren't even thinking.
Doug: Every day. Every day we were in the field. When we start digging, you never know what you're going to find. You have expectations, of course, and plans and we-- I worked with good historians, John Albright, Tom Lukey, George of course, George Elmore, and we had a really good working relationship that that carried on for many, many years. One of the kind of funny stories is when we first started on the Barracks, and as you're probably aware, they were used as barns. It was the largest barn in Kansas, and it was really a remarkable building before they brought it back in to be two separate buildings. And the architect, the historic architect who was in charge of the building plans for the restoration of those two structures at the Denver Service Center, I met with those folks, and he said, I'm sorry I can't remember his name right now, but he said, "I know there were fireplaces there and I want you to find the fireplace foundations. Now we know that the inside of those buildings the floors are all gone, and they've been used as animal, for animal husbandry, cows and horses and the like and so it'll be a lot of messed up ground service in there, but those fireplace foundations will be there." And from the historic photographs we could tell where the chimneys were, so we did look for them, and we found no evidence whatsoever of any fireplace foundations and they should have been fairly deep if they were there. And I suggested to the architect that no, they never had those maybe they were using cast iron stoves. He said, "Oh no no no no, they were using fire-- they had fireplaces, we have to have fireplaces." And I kept saying "No I don't think there's any evidence for that." And especially in the kitchen areas of the of the barracks there was-- you could see where the flues were for a cast iron stove, there, you know, and they're still there today. And I kept saying that and they said, "No no no." Then John Albright from his-- as a historian from the Denver Service Center was brought in to do the furnishing studies and he found in the archives the documents that said that all this stuff was being shipped into Fort Larned for the construction of those various buildings, all the woodwork and doors and glass for the windows and this that and the other thing and cast iron wood stoves. And so he and I had a good laugh about that, and the architect never would speak to us again.
Ben: That's awesome. Now--
Doug: That's not quite literally true, but it's a story I like to tell.
Ben: Yeah, exactly. Now I know especially for archaeology, privies are some of the gold mines because that was not just a privy, it was their trash pit. Was there anything you remember of note that you found in the Officers' Privies?
Doug: Yes. They were, they were informative. A couple of them had been dug out and reused by the farm workers during the Frizzel period, so we didn't-- we had a lot of interesting information from the early 1900s and up to the 1930s, I think when they probably put indoor plumbing in. But the South Officers' Quarters, I believe that's number seven, had an intact privy, a very shallow one, but it was intact. And out-- a lot of domestic stuff came out of there. There were combs, a variety of bottles, as you might expect, and, you know, domestic trash. I've forgotten exactly, but bone that-- from various cuts of meat, chicken and beef particularly, possibly buffalo. But of real interest was-- there were some women's combs and doll parts suggesting children had been there, which was interesting from a point of view of having a family. From the male side of things, one of the most interesting things was a group of material that related to scientific experimentation. There were test tubes, there was blood cupping glassware, a variety of-- there was even a fragment of bulbs, rubber bulb, probably for the cupping and a variety of other things that suggested this individual who had, at least somebody who had been there, was interested in scientific studies. The most logical person would have been one of the Surgeons who had been at the post. And so that's a direct set of evidence of a person who was at the post, it could only be one of the three surgeons that we know of, Forwood, Woodhall, or Cowdry, and it said something about that. And I think, I can't remember which one it was, but one of them ended up in the Surgeon General's Office at one point and really had a strong scientific bent. Whether that was his material or not I don't know, but it does add to that story that life on the frontier wasn't just about dealing with wagon trains coming through or Native Americans either in treaty negotiations or annuities or conflict, but that there are other things happening out there that suggested that these people were learning about the natural and cultural history of that part of the world. As a young man, it was very-- I was very impressed by that and I was really excited by what I was doing, so I do remember a lot of it. And the other thing is that after I retired I asked the manager at the Midwest Archaeological Center, I made him an offer he couldn't refuse so to speak, I said I would take all of the information that all of the archaeologists have done and put together for Larned and write an overview and assessment of the park work there. And it's quite remarkable how much work has been done not only by myself but Earl Munger, or going back the days of Jackson W. Moore, "Smokey" Moore, as a park service archaeologist in the in the '60s, 1960s then later on, people at the Midwest Center, William Lees from the Kansas State Historical Society and a few others out there. Anne Voser who was Midwest Archaeological Center, Steve Devor, a number of other people, Jan Dial Jones who did the restoration archaeology on the-- on building 10 the Blockhouse. And she did just a fabulous job with that. Bruce Jones who did the work over at the camp on Pawnee Fork, the Cheyenne Village over there, and he was with Kansas State Historical Society at the time but later ended up and retired from the Midwest Center. But there were thousands of square meters of excavation done plus geophysics and all that, and it's pro-- Fort Larned is probably one of the best studied frontier forts in the United States in my opinion. As I say, a lot of stuff came out of there, and a lot more to a lot more to learn.
Phil Grossardt: An event you won't want to miss is this year's Mess and Muster, a collaborative event with the Fort Larned Old Guard and Fort Larned National Historic Site. This year's theme is: Defending the Frontier. Join us on Saturday April 26th as we explore what the soldiers experience was both in garrison and in the field and the tools, they use to accomplish their mission. The evening's program will look at original examples of historic firearms used at Fort Larned all programs are free. A bagged lunch and a catered dinner will be offered: lunch is $12 per person and dinner is $20 per person. A silent auction will also be held at the evening's program. For more information, go to triple www.ftlarnedoldguard.com. Have you ever wanted to experience history for yourself? We're always looking for volunteers to help us present the history of Fort Larned's firearms and artillery. if you're interested in joining the Fort Larned Rifle Corp and Canon Crew historic weapons program, this year's mandatory training will be held at the Fort Saturday, May 3rd and will be an all-day training. For more information, call the Fort at 620-285-6911 or email us at fols_internet@nps.gov. Our biggest event of the year is just around the corner! join us on May 24th through the 26th for our annual Memorial Day weekend event. Experience this historic fort as it comes to life with the sights, sounds, and smells of a frontier post from 160 years ago. Firing demonstrations, blacksmith demonstrations, programs, and more will be sure to educate and entertain the whole family. Come for one day or all three and experience history for yourself. For more information call us at 620-285-6911 or email us at fols_internet@nps.gov.
Doug: One of my funny stories if you-- if I may be, if you allow
Ben: Absolutely.
Doug: I-- one of our early projects there, and I can't remember which year it was just offhand, I think it was '73, but we were looking at building number four, the commissary/quarter-- or well the old quartermaster storehouse/commissary, but there was a shed attached to the back based on a photograph as you probably are aware. And we would look for it, and we couldn't find it there was no foundation, there was just nothing there. Subsequently, the very last project I did for the Park Service before retiring in 2006, I-- actually it would have been 200-- late 2005, because I retired in the 2nd of January 2006, not that I'm I can remember every detail. But the-- I was sent back down with a couple of people, Tom Theson and Missy Bayer, and we were to go back and look for that foundation one more time. And also do some other stuff around the back of that building on the on the south side to-- because there was some restoration work going to be done on the foundation. So I had to dig the same holes up that I had dug-- that my crew had dug in the 1970s in 2005, so I ended up where I started as they say.
Ben: That's awesome.
Kristin: Over the span of your career, what was your favorite location where you--
Doug: Oh, that's hard to-- that is really hard to say. I've been so many places and done so many things and all of them have been interesting. It-- to me it is all about the data. It's recovering the information that helps us understand the past better. If I have any place that that's really close to my heart, oddly enough it's Fort Larned, Kansas.
Kristin: We were hoping you'd say that.
Doug: I love going back there, I love coming back there it's a-- to see how it's changed, to see new interpretation every time I drop by, I don't get there very often anymore since my family's all deceased and not no longer around Kansas. It is really a great place to visit and I think it's an incredibly underrated resource in the Park Service. So-- and you've got the Santa Fe Trail ruts nearby, you've got the Pawnee Village, you've got so much going on there to tell a story about people passing through that part of the world of homesteading that part of the world that it truly is a remarkable place. And it all, you know, the history of Fort Larned itself after the military and the fact it became a ranch and the Frizzel property, who was an important person in Kansas history, it is a wonderful, wonderful place. My second one choice would be of course Little Bighorn. But-- and but there you go, you got Cuter coming to Fort Larned in 1867, I also worked at Washita, I helped find that site and for the 1868, and then I, you know, did all that work at the Little Bighorn, so I've been following Custer around the Great Plains for like, you know, 50 years now.
Ben: Yeah. Not hard to do since he touched it seems like every corner of the West.
Doug: Yeah well, he certainly got over the Central and Northern Plains a lot and as they say, he only lost one battle.
Ben: That's the most important one. No, so, what connections have you found over the years between Fort Larned and a lot of these other sites that you've worked at? Beyond just say Custer and things like that.
Doug: Well yeah, the personalities being the historic characters that were many of these places are, you know, time after time are the same people moving around. But it it's about the archaeological record, the record of construction techniques, which change from place to place but are still the Army plans for particularly 1860s and 70s and 8-- well up to the 1900s, are all standardized and you can see that over and over and over again in many of these military installations where I've had to work or been advisee on or whatever. And so you get to see that, and then the recovery of the personal artifacts I think is really fascinating. You know, whether it's a, you know, a bottle of-- that held perfume or some medicate-- patent medicine and we saw plenty of that at Larned, as well as again like a comb, a ladies comb or a lice comb that would could have been used by anybody at that time period. All those things bring the individual back to me as part of the history of a place, that puts the people back on that landscape to me. And that is an important part of doing archaeology, is not just the larger patterns, but is to see the individual people, even if you can't name them, you can see their quirks and what they did. There's a good example from behind the barracks, I think number one there, we were doing some trenching behind that in '72, and trying to figure out, you know, if there had been any porches or pathways or anything like that back there. And outside that kitchen door, on the west side I believe, there was a cluster of material out there, and it was carved bullets and smoking-- clay smoking pipes those kaolin and white kaolin clay pipes, variety of other things, very personal objects. Which just suggests that's where men were whiling away their leisure time, off duty time, in the back. Who would have thought? That yet-- you know, we sure-- we know people were doing those kind of things, not very far from the well, and not far from the kitchen door. So-- but you can visualize guys probably in undress uniforms or maybe even their shirt sleeves out there, you know, sitting around, talking, smoking a pipe, chewing tobacco and whiling away their time in-- with doing rather idle things, but keeping their hands busy.
Ben: Yeah. You know, those free time things that as a living historian/reenactor that I see guys do all the time no too. And I can definitely see from doing living history and reenacting at the Fort I can definitely see that as an area to sort of congregate in the evening. So that's really cool.
Doug: Well it-- particularly in the summer, would be on the North side out of the out of the sun, in the shade, I wouldn't want to be there in the winter necessarily. But summer, spring, fall, it'd be pretty nice out there, I would think.
Ben: Yeah.
Kristin: No, I just want to thank you for all your work you've done here over the years to help create this story and keep this story going for us.
Doug: Well it is a special place for a lot of reasons and for me, personally. And I've been privileged to be a part of that history there and I am very proud of being able to do that, and it's wonderful to see the continued development of the site and the story.
Ben: Yeah no, it's a cool place with a cool story and you definitely, if you get a chance to, our new museum exhibits I think you'd really enjoy because there's some cool bits in there.
Doug: Yeah, I haven't seen the new exhibits, at least not all of them anyway, so got to get back there again one of these days, find a good excuse.
Ben: But yeah, no, so thank you again for coming on and sharing a bit of your story and how you've helped tell the story of the Fort here, and hope you have a wonderful day.
Doug: Alright, thank you.
Phil Grossardt: As always Fort Larned National Historic Site is open 7 days a week from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and is just 6 miles west of Larned, so stop by for a visit. If you're interested in learning how you can help Fort Larned National Historic Site, give us a call at 620-285-6911 or email us at fols_internet@nps.gov and ask us about volunteer opportunities. Now back to the rest of the episode.
Ben: Welcome to the discussion portion of the episode where we break down the interview and how it applies to Fort Larned. I'm Ranger Ben one of the Park Rangers here at Fort Larned National Historic Site. I do a lot of work with our social media, obviously with the podcast as well, and enjoy living history a lot. I'm also joined by Kristin Keith.
Kristin: Thanks, Ben, for asking me to join you this year. I've been volunteering out here at Fort I think for around 10 years now, I enjoy doing living history working with school groups that come through with some education programs and tours. I'm involved in Fort Larned Old Guard, I'm currently serving as chair, and also part of the Santa Fe Trail Association, our local chapter, Wet/Dry Route Chapter and the Learned Historical Society.
Ben: Also joining me is Liz Rasmussen.
Liz Rasmussen: Thanks, Ben, for having me. I have been volunteering at the Fort for about a year and a half. I really enjoy living history and learning more about the history of Fort Larned, which is so local here in Kansas, it's kind of cool to have something local that has such a big impact on how Larned was established and how the fort was established.
Ben: Well, that was a fantastic interview. I really enjoyed talking with Doug and his experiences in the Park Service and outside of the Park Service as well. Really my favorite part in talking with him was just the amount of stuff that he's found over the years, not only here at the Fort, but at Little Bighorn and the countless other places he's been as well. And the fact that by the time they were done with a Little Bighorn project they had 5,000 artifacts that they had found. That was crazy to me.
Kristin: I mean what a dream job to have. Just an incredible life of finding artifacts that tell story after story after story. It is such an amazing career he has had and we're so lucky to have had him here at Fort Larned to help, in the beginning, help us figure out what our story was and how we were going to tell it with what he found.
Liz: His job is so important in preserving Larned and making it, for the visitors, trying to make it seem like what it would be like back in the day, and how the living quarters would look, and how the store would look, all of that is so very important for visitors that come through and want to learn more about Fort Larned.
Ben: Yeah, I can't imagine the Squad Room with a fireplace now. Like the fact that he-- they were able to find that, him and John Albright, were able to find that through archaeology and through historic information and historic records were able to find out that, no, it wasn't fireplaces like we originally thought it might have been, but it was cast iron stoves. Like that that just changes the whole layout of every room basically.
Kristin: Yeah, so when people think of archaeology, I think what first might come to someone's mind are objects. But, you know, he was talking about finding architecture which was something, you know, I hadn't given a lot of thought to, but you know it's so important, you know, when he-- when we're trying to put together what this place looked like and how, you know, daily life, how it was run just, you know, making sure that the architecture of all the buildings is correct.
Liz: To piggyback off Kristin, we don't have very many pictures, so having him find the architecture part helps build that picture.
Ben: Absolutely. Yeah, and that was, I mean there's a few stories throughout the years. There's one that George told, so the episode one of last season, when we were putting the porch back on the Shops Building, there was argument between-- there was I guess archaeological evidence for eight posts on the porch roof and also ten, and so there's that-- just, I mean, those are minor details for a lot of people, but I mean, if we're trying to recreate this thing exactly how it looked, that kind of information is crucial.
Kristin: Sure, I also loved how unexpectedly he was helping build the story of civilians that were out here, not just the military side of it. But, you know, when you're digging through a privy which is an outhouse in just in case someone's wondering, you know, a lot of the objects he found had to do with women and children, you know, so there is that definite evidence that wasn't just soldiers living out here, but there were, you know, lots of civilians. And then I also loved the discoveries he made that showed what the doctors were doing out here, not just taking care of medical needs, but the scientific study, you know, they were involved in with wildlife and plant life, you know, and those other kinds of things that they had to report back. It was neat to have found evidence about that also.
Liz: I liked listening to them talk about when they were digging up the privies and they found the one that hadn't been dug up yet by the farmers, and it had the science experiment materials either around or in it when he dug it up there was test tubes and a couple other things, that was interesting. As well as the doll pieces that were evidence that there was in fact children and the women's combs as long-- as well as the men's combs.
Ben: Yeah, and that's-- I mean so many times we say things like "If only these walls can talk", but these walls really can talk, you just have to look in the right place, and archaeology a lot of times is that place. For me one of the most significant discoveries was all of the litter and pipes and things like that that they found out behind the barracks of like, yeah this is where guys hung out quite a bit, like you can-- I mean isolated incidents of a pipe here or part of a comb or maybe a button there, that's cool, but when you have this concentration of these items that were often discarded you can tell that that's where people were and that can change your story of what life was like.
Kristin: Which again, is just telling the story of average ordinary people in their daily lives. Nothing real exciting but things that a visitor can definitely identify with. You know, what were they doing in their free time in the evening? So yeah, it's a neat part of the story, definitely.
Liz: You know, they didn't have TV and they didn't necessarily have a lot of music, I think we have two pianos maybe, one or two pianos and that was their form of entertainment. So getting-- preserving the different activities they could do and putting that in the different rooms for the visitors to see kind of paints a picture of like Kristin said, what they were doing and how they were spending their free time.
Ben: Too, I mean, you might look in diaries and journals and things like that that different people kept, but there might not be mention of some of these things. Like how significant was it that there was science experiments going on out here, or that there were X amount of kids out here, or this is where we hung out in the evening. Like how significant would it have to be in order to be written down, for one? For another, are those stories still preserved? And so, while primary documents are important and are important to study, I think pairing them with archaeology, you're able to form a more full picture and I think that's a lot of what they found too at the Battle of Little Bighorn because we don't have a lot of primary documentation of, "Oh so and so was here and then moved here and then went there." But with the work that Dr. Scott was able to do, along with those that were working with him, were to really put together this complete picture of-- or more complete picture of the battle and be able to tell a better story because of it.
Kristin: Absolutely. Dr. Scott, "The Godfather of Battlefield Archaeology".
Ben: I like that title for him.
Liz: I wish I could pick his brain. I wish I could see everything he's seen, it'd be really cool to go back with him when he was digging all this up and looking at everything and pointing out what the object was and I would probably stand there like, "Are you sure that's what that is?" And you're like yeah.
Kristin: Yeah and I loved, I think I asked him if, you know, he found some-- anything that was surprising or that he hadn't counted on and he said every single day. You know, so just what a fascinating way to spend your life, digging in the dirt, you know, and finding all of these neat objects that really tell a cool story.
Ben: And being able to be that person that uncovers that story, which I'm sure he has an appreciation for, himself, especially within the amount of work that he's done over the years.
Kristin: Definitely.
Ben: Well, we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed being a part of it. We hope you join us next month for our next episode and we hope you join us for the rest of the season. Until next time, have a good one.
Phil Grossardt: We thank you for listening to this episode of Footsteps: The Fort Larned Podcast. Join us next month as we talk with Luecreasea Horne a Park Ranger at Nicodemus National Historic Site and a descendant of some of the original settlers of Nicodemus. If you enjoy listening, please give us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, share footsteps with your friends and family, and be sure to subscribe to keep up with the latest episodes. Make sure you also check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and X, and as always, enjoy the valuable resources contained on our website www.nps.gov/fols. Thank you for listening and until next time this is Footsteps: The Fort Larned Podcast.
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Guest: Dr. Doug Scott Hosts: Ben Long, Kristin Keith, Liz Rasmussen Join us as we talk with Dr. Doug Scott, a career archeologist who has worked the National Park Service as well as other agencies as he has sought to uncover the stories of those in the past. Dr. Scott's work has taken place not only within the United States, but internationally as well.