BuckleBoy
Gold Member
Hello All,
Rodeo Recon and I got out on Tuesday to team up on pinpointing some new sites.
We set out for a place where there had been an old "Dunkard Church" long ago. Google-Earthing the area revealed that the site was now just a wooded lot. We piled the gear in the car and set out...
Arriving on the scene we saw a long driveway to the property owner that had signs posted: "NO TRESPASSING" and "BEWARE OF DOGS"
This didn't look great, but we took our chances and drove up to the house. The dogs turned out to be friendly (except for a little Dachshund that wanted a piece of us 
), and the owner was a kind, older man. He gave us the go-ahead, and we leapt into the woods with out machines cranked up and our hopes high. After a little canvassing the area, we found the spot where the stone supports for the old church were. Here's a "Then and Now" series of photographs. There was little left to indicate that the building was ever there:
We POUNDED the site--and got only relics...pieces of oil lanterns, a toe tap, harmonica reeds, and a brass wedding band. Great relics, but no old coins.
So I decided to drive to another spot I'd been working on: And old one-room schoolhouse from an 1880's map of the area. We drove in, decided on what was the most likely spot to start, and began to knock on doors. We got the property owner's name, headed into a TINY little town to use the phone directory, and looked up his address. After a pleasant chat with him and his wife, we were given permission to hunt the schoolhouse site.
After returning to the site, we figured that the most obvious spot for the schoolhouse was in the corner, at the intersection of two roads, in a cornfield. After getting no iron signals (the Hallmark sign of a structure there in the past), we wandered back towards the road with puzzled expressions on our faces. We decided to venture out beside the cornfield, staying parallel to the road, into an area which the farmer had allowed a gas well to be drilled on. On the top of a little knoll--about 100 yards in front of the gas well--we got the iron and coal that we'd been looking for. We broadened our scan of the area and worked from the iron signals on the knoll, picking up pieces of iron school desks and brass tips off of pencils. Rodeo found the first coin--a BADLY corroded penny. I have no idea what the heck it is--but it is a small cent. Most likely a wheat. More bits of brass followed. As darkness approached I managed a corroded Buffalo Nickel--1918.
Not exactly the payoff we'd been hoping for...but as you know, the goal of research is to put the detectorist on sites that have lots of possibility--which these sites did. As we were talking to the first property owner at the church site, he was telling a story about his grandfather, who used to say that when he was a kid, "A nickel looked like a wagon wheel." A good chunk of change back then. Remembering the comment as we drove home, the Buffalo put a smile on my face.
Regards,
Buckleboy
Rodeo Recon and I got out on Tuesday to team up on pinpointing some new sites.
We set out for a place where there had been an old "Dunkard Church" long ago. Google-Earthing the area revealed that the site was now just a wooded lot. We piled the gear in the car and set out...Arriving on the scene we saw a long driveway to the property owner that had signs posted: "NO TRESPASSING" and "BEWARE OF DOGS"
This didn't look great, but we took our chances and drove up to the house. The dogs turned out to be friendly (except for a little Dachshund that wanted a piece of us ), and the owner was a kind, older man. He gave us the go-ahead, and we leapt into the woods with out machines cranked up and our hopes high. After a little canvassing the area, we found the spot where the stone supports for the old church were. Here's a "Then and Now" series of photographs. There was little left to indicate that the building was ever there:We POUNDED the site--and got only relics...pieces of oil lanterns, a toe tap, harmonica reeds, and a brass wedding band. Great relics, but no old coins.
So I decided to drive to another spot I'd been working on: And old one-room schoolhouse from an 1880's map of the area. We drove in, decided on what was the most likely spot to start, and began to knock on doors. We got the property owner's name, headed into a TINY little town to use the phone directory, and looked up his address. After a pleasant chat with him and his wife, we were given permission to hunt the schoolhouse site.
After returning to the site, we figured that the most obvious spot for the schoolhouse was in the corner, at the intersection of two roads, in a cornfield. After getting no iron signals (the Hallmark sign of a structure there in the past), we wandered back towards the road with puzzled expressions on our faces. We decided to venture out beside the cornfield, staying parallel to the road, into an area which the farmer had allowed a gas well to be drilled on. On the top of a little knoll--about 100 yards in front of the gas well--we got the iron and coal that we'd been looking for.
We broadened our scan of the area and worked from the iron signals on the knoll, picking up pieces of iron school desks and brass tips off of pencils. Rodeo found the first coin--a BADLY corroded penny. I have no idea what the heck it is--but it is a small cent. Most likely a wheat. More bits of brass followed. As darkness approached I managed a corroded Buffalo Nickel--1918. Not exactly the payoff we'd been hoping for...but as you know, the goal of research is to put the detectorist on sites that have lots of possibility--which these sites did. As we were talking to the first property owner at the church site, he was telling a story about his grandfather, who used to say that when he was a kid, "A nickel looked like a wagon wheel." A good chunk of change back then. Remembering the comment as we drove home, the Buffalo put a smile on my face.
Regards,
Buckleboy
Upvote
0
