It came to light in the mid-1980s during ordinary turf-cutting, when machinery or a spade broke through to a layer of birch and hazel branches sitting roughly a metre below the bog surface. What had been uncovered was a togher, an ancient roadway built from timber laid across waterlogged or unstable ground to allow passage where none would otherwise be possible. These structures are among the more quietly remarkable things that Irish bogs preserve; the same anaerobic, acidic conditions that make blanket bog so inhospitable to ordinary decay can hold organic material in near-perfect condition for centuries or even millennia.

Alongside the brushwood, a number of pointed stakes were recovered from the site. Stakes of this kind were typically used to pin or edge a togher's surface, keeping the laid branches from shifting underfoot or floating free in boggy ground. Unfortunately, when the material came to light, no details of the road's orientation or overall dimensions could be recorded, which means the togher's direction of travel and its full extent remain unknown. Paul Gosling documented the find in 1988, and it was later included in the Archaeological Inventory of County Galway. The name of the townland, Both Loiscthe Uachtair, adds a layer of older Gaelic geography to the find, though the togher itself has not been formally dated and its age is unrecorded.