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DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-17): RETURN TO AN OLD RELIC HUNTING HOTSPOT
lordmarcovan
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DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-17): RETURN TO AN OLD RELIC HUNTING HOTSPOT
2010 update and disclaimer: while I once enjoyed nearly exclusive permission to detect this site, it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and it would definitely NOT be cool to dig there now. Signs that detectorists' welcome had worn out were beginning to show on this particular day, as you will read. I have not detected on the site since, obviously, though I have had some outings to the still-public portion of the same bluff, which is a county park.
I returned to some of the parks that were searched on January 10th, and continued with my strategy of digging those fainter signals in hopes of finding deeper, older coins and relics I'd overlooked on previous visits. It was another fairly warm day and a good one to be outdoors. However, the detecting was very uneventful and my persistence yielded me nothing but small trash targets. Tiring of this, I decided to leave the mainland in favor of Gascoigne Bluff on Saint Simons Island, which has been a successful relic hunting spot for me since the mid-1990s.
I soon was detecting in front of the Cassina Garden Club houses, which were built in the late 1700s or early 1800s as slave cabins from the old Hamilton Plantation. The field in front of these houses, though hard hunted over the past decade, is bound to still conceal some deep finds. I dug my first hole and found a rusty square-headed nail. Unfortunately, nails and large, rusty iron targets are abundant on the site. I filled in the hole and was standing up when a small station wagon driven by an older lady pulled up beside me. Somewhat acidly, she asked me if I had permission to detect there, as the site is Cassina Garden Club property. I informed her that I indeed had permission from the Garden Club, whereupon she said, "No you don't!" I told her, yes, I did, though it had been a long time ago- I had donated some relics (a few buttons, musket balls, etc), to the Garden Club to put on exhibit in one of the old slave cabins. Then her face softened a bit and she relented when she remembered who I was. She explained that they had to be much stricter about allowing people on the property these days, and asked if I knew the other man detecting nearby, where they'd put in the new well. I had seen a man standing beside a red pickup truck, talking on a cell phone, when I arrived, but I had no idea he was a metal detectorist! Sure enough, I looked over to the left of the first slave cabin, and there was a big patch of "naked dirt"- with a man detecting on it!
After the Garden Club lady left, I went over to see what this other fellow was finding. He was using a White's Spectrum XLT with a small elliptical coil of some sort. He introduced himself and we spoke briefly. While I was talking to him, I saw half a black glass bottle and numerous pieces of 19th century pottery that had been turned up in the loose dirt when they dug the new well. After all those years of waiting for any kind of earthmoving to take place on this site, here it was, and there was another person detecting it! The area of loose dirt was not really big enough for the two of us to hunt without getting in each other's way, and my headphones were not working, so I knew the beeping of my machine would be unwelcome so near this other relic hunter. Besides, we were still a bit wary of one another, like a pair of strange dogs sniffing each other out. So I moved on, and focused on the field in front of the slave cabins, which I have hunted over and over for years. Most signals proved to be unidentifiable small "rusty crusties", and only one got my pulse rate up- it was a hotter signal and I saw what looked to be the round edge of a coin or button protruding from the dirt, but alas, it turned out to be only the brass end of an old shotgun shell.
Soon it was getting dark, and still this other detectorist was busy on the "naked dirt" area I wanted so badly to hunt. Oh, well. Had my headlamp been working, I would have waited for him to leave and hunted the spot after dark. But it was nearly time to leave. One final signal for me proved to be a deep musket ball, no doubt from the early 1800s. Here at least there was a relic that had been overlooked! It had a few small cut marks on its surface, but was obviously a dropped example that had never been fired. It had a nice whitish patina and is the second such musket ball I've found in that field (many .69 caliber Civil War Minie bullets have turned up elsewhere on the site, but this is an earlier round musket ball that would have been fired from a smoothbore weapon).
While not a spectacular find, it was a "keeper", and it salvaged the day's detecting expedition from being a total failure.
Before we left I spoke some more with the other detectorist, who turned out to be a metal detector dealer, with a shop in the Village on St. Simons Island! I had no idea there was a local dealer here. He told me he'd been open five months or so and gave me his card. I told him I was a part time coin dealer and he said maybe we could work out a swap with some coins for a detector, when it was time for me to upgrade. I had admired his XLT, as I've always wanted to try one of those.
I never did get a chance to detect the "naked dirt" that day. The other guy claimed to have found nothing in it but rusty iron targets, which is certainly plausible in that spot.
~RWS
Pictured below: Gascoigne Bluff on Frederica River, St. Simons Island, Georgia: old tabby slave cabins from Hamilton Plantation, now Cassina Garden Club houses. Photographed February, 2005.
2010 update and disclaimer: while I once enjoyed nearly exclusive permission to detect this site, it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and it would definitely NOT be cool to dig there now. Signs that detectorists' welcome had worn out were beginning to show on this particular day, as you will read. I have not detected on the site since, obviously, though I have had some outings to the still-public portion of the same bluff, which is a county park.
I returned to some of the parks that were searched on January 10th, and continued with my strategy of digging those fainter signals in hopes of finding deeper, older coins and relics I'd overlooked on previous visits. It was another fairly warm day and a good one to be outdoors. However, the detecting was very uneventful and my persistence yielded me nothing but small trash targets. Tiring of this, I decided to leave the mainland in favor of Gascoigne Bluff on Saint Simons Island, which has been a successful relic hunting spot for me since the mid-1990s.
I soon was detecting in front of the Cassina Garden Club houses, which were built in the late 1700s or early 1800s as slave cabins from the old Hamilton Plantation. The field in front of these houses, though hard hunted over the past decade, is bound to still conceal some deep finds. I dug my first hole and found a rusty square-headed nail. Unfortunately, nails and large, rusty iron targets are abundant on the site. I filled in the hole and was standing up when a small station wagon driven by an older lady pulled up beside me. Somewhat acidly, she asked me if I had permission to detect there, as the site is Cassina Garden Club property. I informed her that I indeed had permission from the Garden Club, whereupon she said, "No you don't!" I told her, yes, I did, though it had been a long time ago- I had donated some relics (a few buttons, musket balls, etc), to the Garden Club to put on exhibit in one of the old slave cabins. Then her face softened a bit and she relented when she remembered who I was. She explained that they had to be much stricter about allowing people on the property these days, and asked if I knew the other man detecting nearby, where they'd put in the new well. I had seen a man standing beside a red pickup truck, talking on a cell phone, when I arrived, but I had no idea he was a metal detectorist! Sure enough, I looked over to the left of the first slave cabin, and there was a big patch of "naked dirt"- with a man detecting on it!
After the Garden Club lady left, I went over to see what this other fellow was finding. He was using a White's Spectrum XLT with a small elliptical coil of some sort. He introduced himself and we spoke briefly. While I was talking to him, I saw half a black glass bottle and numerous pieces of 19th century pottery that had been turned up in the loose dirt when they dug the new well. After all those years of waiting for any kind of earthmoving to take place on this site, here it was, and there was another person detecting it! The area of loose dirt was not really big enough for the two of us to hunt without getting in each other's way, and my headphones were not working, so I knew the beeping of my machine would be unwelcome so near this other relic hunter. Besides, we were still a bit wary of one another, like a pair of strange dogs sniffing each other out. So I moved on, and focused on the field in front of the slave cabins, which I have hunted over and over for years. Most signals proved to be unidentifiable small "rusty crusties", and only one got my pulse rate up- it was a hotter signal and I saw what looked to be the round edge of a coin or button protruding from the dirt, but alas, it turned out to be only the brass end of an old shotgun shell.
Soon it was getting dark, and still this other detectorist was busy on the "naked dirt" area I wanted so badly to hunt. Oh, well. Had my headlamp been working, I would have waited for him to leave and hunted the spot after dark. But it was nearly time to leave. One final signal for me proved to be a deep musket ball, no doubt from the early 1800s. Here at least there was a relic that had been overlooked! It had a few small cut marks on its surface, but was obviously a dropped example that had never been fired. It had a nice whitish patina and is the second such musket ball I've found in that field (many .69 caliber Civil War Minie bullets have turned up elsewhere on the site, but this is an earlier round musket ball that would have been fired from a smoothbore weapon).
While not a spectacular find, it was a "keeper", and it salvaged the day's detecting expedition from being a total failure.
Before we left I spoke some more with the other detectorist, who turned out to be a metal detector dealer, with a shop in the Village on St. Simons Island! I had no idea there was a local dealer here. He told me he'd been open five months or so and gave me his card. I told him I was a part time coin dealer and he said maybe we could work out a swap with some coins for a detector, when it was time for me to upgrade. I had admired his XLT, as I've always wanted to try one of those.
I never did get a chance to detect the "naked dirt" that day. The other guy claimed to have found nothing in it but rusty iron targets, which is certainly plausible in that spot.
~RWS
Pictured below: Gascoigne Bluff on Frederica River, St. Simons Island, Georgia: old tabby slave cabins from Hamilton Plantation, now Cassina Garden Club houses. Photographed February, 2005.
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