Menu
What's new
Find's Treasure Forums

Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!

You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.

Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.

Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.

Click here to register!

Need Support Help?

Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you

Changed email? Forgot to update your account with new email address? Need assistance with something else?, click here to go to Find's Support Form and fill out the form.

Ghost towns, mining towns.????

You know, I love you guys. Smile, smile, can't get smiley's box to work, but thank God I'm back and not stuck in some Nevada jail somewhere. Well, you know I've got my tail between my legs, my head held low, and no old coins in my pocket, and you know why, cause you warned me ahead of time. Here's the quick story, (I hope).
Headed on out to the ilustrius state of Nevada, you know where Las Vegas, real whore houses, and lots of cool old ghost towns reside. Well that's all true, but whether or not you can afford Vegas, or the whore houses, (what I hear is they're pretty steep) or afford to take the chance of hunting in a ghost or mining town, is another story!!!!
I think I found a pretty S T R O N G answere in the "sweet" little town called Rhyolite Nevada, which is one of the old mining towns where they have a house built out of old Anheiser Bush beer bottles, worth a fortune in they're own right because the house was built around 1906. well on the front gate they had a little sign called the "Bearau of Land Managment" or BLM for short where a nice lady showed up and told me about metal detecting in Nevada. Apparently she worked for the BLM and very nicely, and personally, but forthrightly said. "OK, hear's the deal". Nevada treats gold mine towns about like the east treat's civil war cites. They're archeological sites, and if you get caught with any "artifacts" they can take away your detector, take away your car, haul you off to jail, fine you up to 10 grand, and then in a bad case keep throw you in prison for up to three hears. Well you know that made me jump for joy.!!!! I had a lump in my throat about the size of a golf ball, because I had visions of me finding old silver dollars, gold coins, indian heads, you name it and maybe an old gun or two, heading back to the forum to tell you all "how good it was". I'm still shakin' in mly tennis shoes thinking about that. Well I'll guarantee you it scared the crap out of me, but I took some video, looked around a bit and thought: "Hey, what if I just go to one that's deserted and maybe I could get away with it. You know, I hate to admit that, but it's the truth, and I'm really ashamed because I feel I still have morals and scrupals, but I "wanted it soo bad" I decided to go to one of the "so called" deserted mining towns and check it out. I drove down this dirt road for 10 miles and started seeing some old delapited buildings, but it didn't look like much and I noticed that there were some "newer" mobile homes and vehicles there so I thought about it, and, God help me, but I pulled the Quatro out because they were over the hill and started detecting a little. There were two walls made out of carved stone and a pit in the middle of it, but, you know I was so scared and the guilt got to me so much, I quit detecting and put the detector back in the car. Man what an ordeal. It sure takes the fun out of detecting, when you know you're probably breaking the law, (acording to the BLM lady) and that there might be an officer living in one of those mobile homes. The only thing I found was a square nail laying on the ground, and you know that the time about 30 years ago when I got caught by the ranger in Yosemiti national park, I had found some square nails just before she showed up.. what an omen that was, so I hot the H..., out of there.


 
Unbelievably, I tried to go to one more deserted town, but I ran out of time and had to start heading back to San Diego. You know, as I was coming in to San Diego, I honestly thought, wow, we don't have any ghost towns here, but at least I can go down to the beach and pull the old "Blue Beast" out and not feel like I'm going to sing sing. It's a heck of a thing to deal with, and I know some of you guys have had to deal with the same type of thing. where do you draw the line. It either gets down to a legal thing or a moral thing or both, and usually it's both. I can't tell you what to do in the same circumstance but, I'd sure give it some serious consideration. what if I'd gotte caught at that last place, with one silly square nail in my hand, and "Bubba", figured it's time to teach this boy a lesson. Son, you're going to jail, and I don't just mean that fecitously, I do realize the importance of the "heritage" of a state or town, and it does affect me moraly too. I'm just saying this because I know we're all in the same potential boat here, whether it's Nevada, or Tennesse, if there's laws and rules and regs., we have to make a decision. I hope we all, including me, consider these options and hopefully make the best choice. I gotta admit, I'm still fighting it, because I try to rationalize: "Well it's only burried stuff, you know" but then there's the legal end of it. I did read in the Urban Treasure hunters book where some guys back east got caught in a civil war cite in the middle of the night and got taken to jail, fined thousands of dollars and got their metal detectors conficated. Sure is food for thought, but at any rate, I still got some video of the towns, they're very interesting, and I would recommend them to anyone interested in that kind of stuff. Thankyou for reading this, because it's not just my little weekend romp but, I think, pretty important stuff to deal with. Thank goodnes, there's still places we can go to without too much fear or guilt.
 
There is one option, maybe worth mentioning. When I talked to the BLM lady, she said that they do have archeological digs of a sort and that she, herself, had used a metal detector to find some old coffens in an old graveyard. No kidding. She said they could read the nails around the edge of the coffen because in those days or at that place, the graves were that shallow. Apparently they could tell where the coffens were by the nail holes around the edges of the coffens. what a trip, but also, she said, they had archelogical digs of a sort, and I thought: wow. what if I could go there under those terms and still look for some really old cool stuff. Even though I wouldn't be able to keep it, it still sounds exciting to me to dig up some old coins and artifacts from that era.
 
Wow...quite a story, man. So you had a good trip, then?

So she's going to call you when they have one of those archaeological digs, or what?

I think the deal is you have to sleuth out where the old ghost towns are that AREN'T tourist attractions or protected sites. But as you said, there's always the beach.

Make sure you check the Beach and Water forum a go back and look for my posts from the last few days...I had a few good finds. One nice Sapphire ring too.
 
Yea, Mike, youre right. If you want to hunt em, you need to find the really obscure ones. As far as the archeological stuff, she really didn't say she'd call me, I just thought it might be a neat thing to do, if it gave me a chance to hunt the towns. Trouble is, the places are 3 or more hundred miles away and I'm gettin pretty short on bucks and time these days. You know that old local beach is starting to look pretty good these days, by golly!!! I gotta remember there's still the bad guy neighborhoods to, that have a lot of the older houses and digable sidewalk areas. I'm sort of kidding about the bad guys, but not totally. Notoriously the older more diggable areas seem to be the more run down areas too. I think you may have said that yourself. At any rate, I'm "lucky" to be back and it kind of gives me a new slant on looking for places to hunt. I'll let you know "if" I ever find that first ring. The only ring I ever found was some years ago with my old Garrett Master Hunter 7. Pretty cool detector for it's time, but pretty heavy unless you got the waist strap thing going. I'll get on the beach site and check out your newer posts. Hey, a saphire ring, "ain't too bad"!!!!, you old rascle you.
 
Get out there and hit those beaches while the hittin' is still good. Should be LOTS of targets out there right now. But you have to go out there, turn on that Quattro, and swing it back and forth to find them. :D
 
Yes, I should have at least had my "real" hiking boots on. Would have been safer too, because there's a lot of glass, nails, you name it at those sites, but you know, dumb dumb here, from California, forgot to bring the shoes. Hell, I could have gotten hoof and mouth disease, theres wild burros running around there from the old mining days. Apparently they procreated and they're still there. I'm sure, because they have a sign talking about it and I actually saw "burrow poop" by the side of the road. I also saw hoof tracks, but the burros were somewhere else at the time. Wow, what a ride.
 
You're right Mike. Sounds too simple doesn't it. "Just get the heck out there and swing that thing. Like the man said, "It don't mean a thing, if you ain't got that swing." Seriously, your right. You get a lot of great stuff, but I know you put some serious time out there looking for it too. Thanks for the encouragement Mike.
 
I know your all kidding me, and I love it finn. You're my friends away from home, and right now you're about the only friends I have that are in to the same thing I'm into, you know: That crazy hobby called Treasure Hunting. My regular friends here at home smile when I tell em what I'm doing, but none of them are into metal detectors. I'm about to join a club here in town called Coinshooters, in fact I need to call the guy so I can pay my dues. It's only 20 bucks a year, and they have one meeting a month and several digs and events a month for fun. Good bunch of fellas, just like you guys.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top