I get so mad at this national forest here. They wont let you do anything, pan for gold, metal detect, even ride horses. Yet they have entire villages, farmsteads, houses, etc that sit there and have gone from livable condition to now in extreme stages of rot and collapse. It is another case of do as I say not as I do, its crazy here and I am afraid to sneeze without a ranger coming up to me and issuing me a fine for bio-hazard contamination of their sacred space. I have done a lot of diving in the park, specifically right up river of where this location is (just up river of the old cement railroad arch bridge at the exit of the Gap right after the cliffs), If you are a diver, and it is still there after the recent flood, there is a neat old train wreck to dive in about 20 feet of water, if you park at the first parking lot (indian head?) right after 611 south exits the cliffs and go straight down one of the paths, and just north of the little beach there you will find it. An old box car full of miller bottles with the old foil labels, another train car as well, that looks like maybe it had a truck on it? all that's left is a big old dualie axle and tires on it. There is supposed to be a mail car too which must be under the muck as I never have found it. Word to anyone who dives it, do not bring anything up, there will be a ranger boat waiting for your return to the service, I can almost guarantee it, I think there was a ranger boat waiting every time I have ever returned to the surface, they are very bored rangers here.
My opinion on this safe is that if anything, one of the contractors that worked on the highway system when they built 80 had to have found it. They removed the lines and built the highway right up to the side of the river, if it is still there its probably buried under many feet of heavy riff raff.
This is how bad they are here, one time I found a spanking new golf ball that washed down from Shawnee golf course right upriver of this spot, so I grabbed it to give it to the dog on the boat awaiting our return to play with. I surfaced, brand spanking new looking golf ball in hand and there is a ranger boat there. Before I give it to the dog he grabs it from me. I now sit through a 30 minute reprimand of how I should not have brought this up from the bottom, now he has to go file hours of historical find paperwork because I broke the rules and brought something up from the bottom. He was so mad about this golf ball, I did all I could not to burst out laughing. Just a word to everyone, never get caught bringing anything up to the surface within park boundaries. I imagine if a pair of rangers saw me with a metal detector in the park one would keel over dead from a heart attack and the other would pull his gun and shoot me. This is a shame as there are so many good detecting spots littered throughout the entire park. The indians used to mine copper here so who knows what kind of neat artifacts you could find.
I also wanted to add, if the safe did get washed out into the river somehow, it gets very wide and straight from this point so it may not be too far away.
