About Wild Clay Archive

Tap anywhere in the United States and understand which soil series and layers may occur there, roughly how deep, what they look like raw, and what evidence suggests a layer might interest a potter. Then save the spot privately, add it to the public archive as a community lead, or open it in Google Maps.

This is a scouting tool, not a guarantee. It compresses a scouting routine that used to take four apps into one screen. It does not confirm that usable pottery clay exists at any exact point.

How to read a profile

• A tapped point resolves to a USDA map unit, a mapped area class, not one exact soil.
• A map unit lists several components (soil series or areas like Urban land). The percentage estimates how much of the whole map unit each covers; it is not the chance that the series is under your feet. The most common component is shown first.
• Each series has typical layers (horizons) with typical depths. The real profile at your point can differ substantially.
• The wild-clay potential level (Not enough data, Weak indication, Possible, Promising, Strong lead) always means "worth investigating". Every level shows its reasons, drawn from clay percentage, texture, thickness, depth, rock fragments, the engineering plasticity index, and the official description's wet-consistence words.
• Clay percentages describe the fine-earth fraction (particles under 2 mm). Rock fragments are counted separately. Raw color is not fired color.

What it cannot tell you

The exact depth at your point, ceramic plasticity, throwing or handbuilding quality, drying shrinkage, fired color, maturation temperature, vitrification, glaze behavior, kiln safety, food safety, contamination, or whether collecting is legal or permitted. USDA words like "sticky" and "plastic" are field observations of wet soil, not pottery tests.

Soil information does not grant access or permission to dig. Verify ownership, local rules, and permission before visiting or collecting.

Data sources

• Soil map units, components, layers, clay percentages, textures, fragments, and plasticity index: USDA NRCS Soil Data Access (SSURGO), queried live and cached.
• Layer colors and wet consistence: Official Soil Series Descriptions, parsed deterministically.
• Soil boundaries on the map: the Soil Data Access WMS service. Base maps: OpenStreetMap contributors and USGS The National Map. Place search: OpenStreetMap Nominatim.
• Related official tool: Web Soil Survey.

Wild Clay Archive interprets public data and does not verify any location. No AI model is used to produce the profiles; every sentence comes from documented rules.

The archive: community leads

The archive is the set of leads people have chosen to share, growing one spot at a time. Anyone can explore it. An account is needed only to save or share. Saved leads are private. A shared community lead shows an approximate area by default (the center of a roughly 1.1 km grid cell); sharing the exact point takes a separate confirmation. Community leads are contributed by users and are not verified or endorsed. Anyone can report a lead.

The hunt logs

This tool came out of hunting clay in the field and through old documents. Those hunts are written up one at a time as Hunt Logs in The Wild Clay Hunt, a free newsletter: a question, a search through survey bulletins, drill logs, and county archives, the dead ends kept in, one find, and the questions still open at the end. Free to read, no account needed.

What we track

Six anonymous events, to learn whether the tool is useful: lookup completed, profile opened, lead saved, lead shared, supporter interest, and return visit. Each carries a hashed random browser id and at most a few small properties such as the survey area code or the potential level. No coordinates, no IP address storage, no third-party scripts, no advertising, and no cookies beyond the sign-in session. The browser's Do Not Track setting is honored.