Logging artifacts

[rickomatic]

Hey guys and gals. As you can see by my post count I am a newbie. Not just to this forum, but to metal detecting as well.
Anyway, as I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with areas to try out my new hobby, and something came to my mind, and I was wondering if anyone else had tried this and had any luck.
The area I live in (Western Washington State) has a long history of logging, and I wondered if anyone had tried detecting in old logged out areas from the turn of the century or the early 20th century. When I look at pictures of old loggers and their techniques I can't help but imagine that they may have "lost" stuff around the trees they were cutting. If you look at old pictures of them on springboards hacking away at huge trees, you can see that they must have spent hours (days??) bouncing up and down on them.
I even have a few old stumps on my property with old springboard notches. I think I'll give em a go this weekend and see if I come up with anything.
Anyone here ever try this kind of hunt?

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

CA has logging history too, and I've worked spots associated with them. I can tell you right now, you'll be wasting your time hunting where the men "worked". Better to find out where their camps were: Where they slept, ate, drank, lived, and played. Not where they worked. Find the locations of their little tent-city camp towns, which would have moved around from location to location, as they depleted trees area by area.

 

[stefen]

There are (or were) several people that hunted logging camps & millworks who posted on TN in the past...

Lots of interesting finds posted...

All finds were in and around where the millworks...

When your looking for a needle in a haystack....always look in the smallest haystack

 

[turtlefoot13]

Logging camps are one of my favorite places to hunt. I find a lot of horseshoes, tobacco tins, early shotgun brass, axe heads, ox shoes and many other types of relics. If you can find the skid road(s) and where the narrow gauge railroad line went through (if there was one), those are both good places to look for logging relics.

To date, I have not found any coins at any of these sites but there is a reason for that. The lumber companies in my area paid virtually all of their employees with paper vouchers good only at the company store.

If you can find any of the semi-permanent camps, you are likely to find a dump close by and can also find old bottles, plates and numerous other relics. Good luck.

Here is a link that shows some of the relics I have found at local logging areas. Each photo is captioned. Not everything in this album is logging related but most of the ones that are, are marked. Page 2 has some axe heads, logging railroad related finds, etc.

http://s388.photobucket.com/albums/oo328/ozarkturtlefoot/Metal Detecting Finds/?start=0

Doug

 

[rickomatic]

Thanks for the replies guys. Informative as usual. The woods out here are pretty thick right now, but I may give it a go come fall when the undergrowth dies down a bit.
I do remember several years ago before I even had an inkling of an interest in metal detecting that my brother and I came accross an old donkey engine grade while out hunting. We found some old boiler pieces and even a couple old wheels, and rails. I'm sure they're still there, well off the beaten path, and I'm sure I can't even remember within half a county exactly where that spot was....LOL.
On a side note, I was "learning" my machine a little bit more this afternoon in my 5/8" minus crushed rock driveway and was surprised (I built this house less than 20 years ago and put the driveway in myself) to find a Sacajawea and some kind of cheapo men's ring.....my first! I'll have to check with my son and see if maybe it was something he lost when he was in high school. I sure don't recognize it.

 

[lumbercamp]

You would think that the loggers would have set their tools down near the tree they cut down. I have detected around numerous old stumps and have never found any items. I find a lot of relics at the camps, within feet of RR grades, (they didn't waste energy by tossing them away from the tracks) along skid roads, along log slides. The bottom of log slides are a good place to finds chains as they would lay them there after un-hooking from the logs. Most of my finds are along side where dirt was dug for any type/size road that used by the loggers, and at the camps.

 

[luvsdux]

I live in N. Idaho and have detected around a number of old logging camps - camps, not actually logged off areas well away from camp. I have yet to find any goodies such as old coins or similar, but I have found lots of axe heads, horse shoes, remains of old dishes and pans and assorted odd pieces that I'm not sure what they were. All the old iron gets heavy to haul out quickly, though. In most of these locations you will probably find a fair bit of the same sorts of things I mentioned. The thing is, what do you do with a pile of rusty axe heads, horse shoes etc. after you get them home? A person might shine one or two up and put handles in them, but other than that they're not much use. However, it is fun to find them and you don't have to be quite so particular on your digging technique as you do in parks etc.
HH
luvsdux