ATLANTA — Welcome to a kudzu jungle along Lakewood Avenue in southwest Atlanta.
“This kudzu is really healthy out here, so it was a challenge to get through all of this,” Andrea Farmer told Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen.
But she says it’s worth it.
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“We’re not really sure what we’re going to find here,” Farmer, an archaeologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said.
While working with the City of Atlanta on a stormwater drainage project near Lakewood Fairground Lake, they’ve uncovered what’s left of the old Atlanta Waterworks.
The facility was built shortly after the Civil War, but abandoned in the 1890s.
Farmer says the water it supplied wasn’t the best for drinking.
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She says it’s likely most of the building’s bricks and stone were taken and used to construct something else, but a few artifacts were left behind.
Farmer is supervising the excavation, and her team has a short window of opportunity to dig through the past, and preserve it for future generations.
“It’s an opportunity to study an archaeological site that otherwise would not be studied, and would probably continue to be forgotten about,” Farmer said.
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