Hunting river banks

TuscaloosaJohnny

Do you find that river banks are good places to hunt or does flooding tend to wash away coins? I was thinking that maybe erosion caused by flooding might unearth some old coins, but I didn't know....what is your experience?

BentFork

I've found that you cannot predict what a river or creekbank will produce. A lot of it in large depends on how much flooding does occur. I've hunted river and creek banks off and on since I began with my dad in the 60s. Some places were good, some bad. If you do find relics, rusty steel cans and such buried, then there is the possibility you might find coinage. If you find silverware then it's probably a picnic spot. Fish hooks mean most often kids fishing. If it's pull tabs you can expect to find zincolns. There are always exceptions though. Recently I found two walking halves less than two feet apart on a creekbad near my home. In the area I found rusty steel cans. Fishing spot, campers? Who knows. By the way, that was the only coins I found there. Nothing else but trash. Depending on where you live you might find coinage, or you might find real treasures like an ancestral habitat has. Did I answer your question?

walkerminus1

<< <i>Did I answer your question? >>



You might not have answered Johnny's question, but you sure answered mine before I even posted it.

Thanks.

Rob

CROCKofCOINS

>> Fishing spot, campers?<<

If you know a spot that was used for swimming...I would check the area! !!

Murphy

I know of a riverbank that use to be part of an amusement park at the turn of the century. There were many "amusements", including booths that you could test your throwing ability, geek shows, music & dancing and a picnic area on the river bank and a baseball field. It is now built over by homes. I had an occasion to hunt one back yard right in the middle of where the Park use to be and I didn't find a thing beyond 1964. I was using a White's IDX adjusted for maximum depth. I found a 1964 quarter right on the river bank. It wasn't but an inch or so deep. There were bees buzzing around the area making me nervous and after criss-crossing the yard and not finding anything good, I left. I figure there must have been a large amount of silt built up on top of the "good stuff".

goldrush00013

<< <i> Do you find that river banks are good places to hunt or does flooding tend to wash away coins? >>



I think they are good places to hunt in my limited experiance.
I've found mostly relics but a few coins do show up.

lordmarcovan

I've not done too much on the actual riverbanks themselves, but here in my neck of the woods, the bluff and land above the riverbank is often quite productive. Around here, as with much of the country, the rivers were the main arteries of transportation and trade until the railroads came along (and in our case, long after that). Here near the seacoast, our rivers are tidal, so there usually isn't much flooding unless there's a spring tide or a hurricane.

High land near a riverbank (but high enough to be above any potential flood level) is what our local relic hunters look for first and foremost. What is often prized real estate today was prized real estate for the last 10,000 years. It is not at all unusual to find prehistoric native artifacts mixed in amongst artifacts of the Spanish mission, English colonial, Revolutionary War, antebellum, and Civil War eras, all on the same site. And usually these layers of artifacts are exposed and sometimes jumbled together by activity in our own era: bulldozers or logging activity.

TuscaloosaJohnny

I did a little detecting on the bank above the Black Warrior River here in Tuscaloosa in River Road Park and found a 20-cent Franc from 1973. I thought that was a bit of an unusual find here...probably someone here from France visiting or attending the University of Alabama, but who really knows? That's the joy of detecting! I'll have to take a pic and submit it for the non-U.S. coin find category me thinks...

librtyhead

The banks of the mighty Merrimack became bloated back in the spring of 06, bottles blasted out from the banks, and broken and twisted they bespeckled the beach...................there was lots of rocks to. But no coins.