THE FINE LINE BETWEEN ARCHAEOLOGY AND THEFT.

An explorer investigates a ruin and finds an artifact that merits conservation.

The ruin is the Michigan Central station and office tower in Detroit.  The artifact, a clock.

The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn received a phone call Friday afternoon saying that the depot clock existed and wanted to "go home."  Museum officials immediately contacted Ford Motor Land Development Corp. and The Ford Archives.

Within hours, text messages were exchanged with the "donor," said Dave Dubensky, chairman and CEO of Ford Land. Ford bought the train station, which closed in 1988 and became a symbol of Detroit's ruin, from the Moroun family and has plans to restore the building.

You'll find the artifact wrapped in swaddling cloth and propped up in an alley.  "The clock is one of hundreds of antiques and decorative parts stolen from the 18-story Beaux arts structure, which opened in 1913 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975."  That would have been easy enough to do.  After Conrail moved most of its offices elsewhere, the upper floors were full of all sorts of paperwork left behind primarily by Penn Central and New York Central traffic department staff, and after Amtrak closed the station, the entire building was effectively scavenging grounds for thirty years.