Just another day?. Not today no sir today was interesting.....Metal detector in hand....
Last edited Fri Mar 15, 2019, 08:46 PM - Edit history (1)
I do this as a hobby. I have one park that I have a permit for as it is a State park.
For the West coast it is a old spot and I have found coins dating back to the 1850's .
My permit requires me to turn in any personal effects and valuable recent finds. And any historic artifacts and the coins are a grey area but I am allowed to keep them.
Today I'm finding the usual old bullet shells, pulltabs & bottlecaps. I'm using a older machine that hits well on larger iron such as axe heads etc.. that my more "sophisticated" machine would ignore. I was happy to find lots of stuff my other machine had walked right over. I started searching a area recently cleared by the conservation corp from the heavy brush. I had searched it 4 times already & was suprised not to really find much of anything despite it being opened for the 1st time in many years.
I had a large hit by a old tree. Right on the surface basically an inch under the soil-a cannon ball. We don't have those very often in Oregon. It was about 20 lbs and 7" diameter. I don't own a cell phone so I didn't take a pic.
Ok that was interesting & I started searching nearby. I realized I had just walked by another tree and should probably check it also despite being still slightly covered by small brush. Got a small hit-dug up-a tooth!-Yikes! a old gold crown-discolored by age and no tooth material at all. Could be a fluke but then another. And another. and-well I stopped at 7 because it was obviously a grave site.
Ok no rangers on site. I drove to the Park main office and turned in the finds. They promised photo's at least and I may get the cannon ball back if it is deemed non historic & safe. The teeth is up to the authorities & I drove back and showed them the exact area.
For the record this is the 4th grave site I've discovered. One made the papers when the county dug up Pioneer graves & dumped the piles on a strip of land by my main road. The 2nd was a park (county) they denied everything called the cops on me and told me it was animal remains wich was BS. The 3rd was very old & just barely visable-on private corporate property. It got ditch witched a few months back when they added some services.
Gotta love the way we treat our history around here (sarcasm of course). One of the Park rangers was rather alarmed people were allowed to do it. I said well I brought you some teeth 1st off-and my childhood hero was not a ball player or official-it was Dr. Louis B Leakey. Only one of the rangers recognized the name.
Anyhow-in honor of our past heroes....
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