Black gold found

My friend who lives in Everett asked me to help her start a garden in the sodded area behind her apartment. Forking out the sod was easy-the soil shook right off. When some ground was cleared of grass I put my bare hands into the soil to find the most beautiful black, loose, rock-free soil I have ever seen. We immediately stuck in some peas and lettuce. I dreamt about that soil. I'm daydreaming about it. It has never before been my good fortune to garden in such dirt.. I am ready to move there just to have that kind of soil in my yard. Does anyone else have natural soil to rave about? And if so, where exactly are you? And I wonder how it got this way. It's situated above the Sound-salt water-so I really don't understand this.

Has it been heavily mulched at some point with bark or naturally from previous evergreens? I am finding nice black layers of topsoil in my yard due to mulch/barkdust applied by the previous owners about 5 years ago. It has broken down beautifully into nice black topsoil, though probably very acidic. Otherwise, my yard is entirely Jory soil (the official "state soil" of Oregon---! While Utah has a "state gun", we in Oregon have a "state soil".) Jory soil is okay. Grapes grow well in it, but it does need to be amended. And wow, it stains my clothes.

The only time I have had my hands in naturally fabulous, deep topsoil was when visiting relatives in eastern South Dakota. My sister in law laughed because I was taking pictures of dirt in her yard.

My own garden sits in glacial deposit, mostly clay with many small rocks.

Were there earthworms in it? Aside from the texture, that is to me the main indicator of good growing dirt.

And yeah, if someone had sawdust or that kind of thing, or leaves, that broke down over enough time, this would be the result I'd expect.

No, never run into that good a growing medium without having created the conditions for it myself, or someone else having done so (like somebody else's vegetable garden, for instance)

one time I was weeding and pulled out a tall thistle and it came out clean with a taproot about a foot long. That soil was very good. But it was somebody's garden so, different circumstances.

Enjoy it, Patti, I know you will. :)

Thanks for your responses. My friend thought I was kinda nuts since she is not a gardener. Yeah, if I'd had my camera I probably would have taken pictures too, Maury. Yes Kyla, so many huge worms. Kosk, it is a house close to a hundred years old and, as we know, land wasn't scraped to death back then when building. It is in the Snohomish river ancient flood plain, as my son pointed out, so perhaps that explains it. He told me he had soil like that in another Everett house he lived in. He never did dig down past the black gold. I am so looking forward to the progress of the radishes, lettuce, peas, spinach and potatoes we planted. Kyla, you know me well, even though this garden is 14 miles from my home, I will be going there often. For us gardeners, there is nothing so exciting, eh? Oh, and while removing about 70 square feet of sod, we ran into 4 rocks!