Above it, at a shallower depth of ten feet, stood the remnants of an oak paling, the stakes still square in section, still spaced roughly two feet apart, preserved in the airless dark of the peat for what may have been centuries. Nobody knows quite how far this structure extended, because nobody went looking for it in any systematic way. It was simply noted, briefly, as an aside to something else entirely.

The causeway came to light in 1932, when L. S. Gogan published his account of the Cnoc na bPoll hoard, a significant find of early metalwork recovered from the same bogland in Cool West. Gogan recorded that evidence of early habitation had been found approximately 400 yards from the hoard's find-site, including the oak stakes and, adjoining them at greater depth, the flagged causeway. A flagged causeway of this kind, stones laid across wet or boggy ground to allow passage, would have been a practical feature of any early settlement in low-lying, waterlogged terrain, and the oak paling, a fence or enclosure of upright wooden stakes, suggests a defined, inhabited space nearby. Gogan marked the approximate location on a map accompanying his report, and that seems to have been roughly where the trail ended.

The area indicated on Gogan's map is now covered by dense coniferous plantation, with deep intersecting drainage channels cut across the ground. When the site was assessed and compiled by Denis Power for the archaeological record in August 2011, no trace of any features remained visible at the surface. The drains and the forestry have done their work thoroughly. There is, in practical terms, nothing to see at Cool West today, which is precisely what makes the record of this place quietly worth knowing about. The causeway itself may still be down there, sealed under plantation and peat, but the bog that preserved it for so long has itself been altered beyond easy investigation.