In the summer of 2023, construction workers installing wooden poles for hammocks at Michigan State University (MSU) hit a mysterious concrete pad underground. They immediately contacted MSU’s Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) to investigate what might be lurking beneath the surface. Through archival and archaeological research, the Campus Archaeology Program discovered that construction workers had inadvertently located the foundation of MSU’s first observatory. Built by students between 1880 and 1881, the observatory housed astronomy classes for some of MSU’s earliest undergraduates. Extensive excavation of the observatory as part of an undergraduate class in the summer of 2024 revealed additional information about the observatory and its students. This talk will cover the initial discovery and resulting 1.5 years of archaeological and archival research on MSU’s first observatory.