Hunting a new location, help me out

[capri_auto]

I am hunting the site of an old hotel from 1820, this hotel was was the premiere destination in my area in its day. It was also joined to a very bust train station since the 1870's. This place saw some serious vacationer travel for over 100 years. The location has since burned down and there is nothing left of it but some woods and small fields. I know the general area where the hotel stood and where the original lawns were.

Ok so I started to hunt around the location of the main Inn. Dug a lot of old pull tabs and some clad from 1965-1975. I am assuming this site has not been hunted because of these finds which were made in abundance. Is this a fair assumption?
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So the clad and tabs have been found from 2-4" Shallower in the trees, deeper in the fields.

You have your top layer of soil which contained the clad and tabs. Then you have some yellow dirt then you hit a layer of golfball size+ rock that is hard to dig. I think this layer of rock is the bottom limit of where the old coins would be, what do you think? This layer of rock is about a foot down in the field.

I am just zig zaging around right now digging pretty much everything non farrous deeper that 4" and fairly repeatable, keeping an eye out for those deeper targets.

Any advise to working this site more efficiently would be great. Thanks for reading.

 

[croakersmoker78]

check out historicaerials.com you can see what was there back to 1930 to get an idea of where the buildings were

 

[dewcon4414]

Most places ive hunted with old driveways where topsoil had accumulated the coins stopped in the gravel. You didnt sound like you were having any problems with depth, especially if you are digging down a foot. So your best bet is to locate where the buildings were then just grid it out. At least you are finding coins, sometimes once a building is burnt they scrap off the soil along with the building... and everything is gone. Ive hunted some of the old school houses from the mid 1800s and there is just plain nothing there not even nails. Back in the 70's they dug a good bit of the silver coins.... and may have done what we do now, leave the clad when looking for older coins.

Dew

 

[capri_auto]

According to the 1931 aerial shot, the building was no longer there. It must have burnt down between 1901- 1931. The second owner died in 1901 and his obituary said the business was still operational. I did find some nails digging very iffy signals, but had my iron mask at -10.

Today I also received permission to hunt the old railroad station that was once part of the Inn grounds. Station opened in 1868 and has since been restored. I also sent the owner an email, maybe he knows the precise location of the old inn.

Yea my depth is good, just adjusted my sensitivity to maintain a nice threshold while sweeping, I think this is key for getting good depth and accurate ID.

 

[NealNoIN]

After you've dug there awhile, hopefully you'll start coming up with evidence of 1800's life. It may be shallow, it may be deep, it may be concentrated in one or two areas, it may be on the rocks, it may be under the rocks(hope not), it may be along the edges of the area you're hunting. Sooner or later it will tell you what you have to do to find the goodies.
JMHO
Neal

 

[Thisoldgoldchaser]

Do you know if the debris of the Inn was hauled away? I am presuming it burnt to the ground. What type of foundation did it have or do you have any idea. I am guessing you have some old photos of it. What type of foundation can be told from the photo. Also, do some test digs and look for a layer of carbon...burn residue. A large fire like that, is going to leave a pretty good layer of carbon even if much of what was left was hauled off. And back then I doubt that they scrapped the land down. Not that far back. And not land that is rural. Too much expense with little gain. Unless they saw into the future and did it just to frustrate certain future metal detectorists.

Scatter some test holes around the area and look for carbon residue. Also, check out some current air photos of the area..like from google scans, and see what those tell you. Scars of human occupation can be seen for a long time. Those new photos could show you exactly where the old inn stood.