steve in so la
Well-known member
I thought I'd post my story about how I researched a site, found the old slabs and dug a silver dollar some years back. It's good entertainment and may give someone some ideas for the upcoming season.
This is the prize I dug at the site, an 1879 dollar, the only one I have ever dug.
It started out as a mining site in the mountains of Arizona that I had read of. It appeared to be large enough to consider detecting. After I had gone over all the printed material in the U of Az main library I stumbled across a "township survey" that was done by a company for the mine owners. I found this big book in the Special Collections part of the library. The report showed all the buildings, their distances from the roads & other buildings. What a find !
Then I saw this old picture of the school house, off to one side, now gone. Keep in mind I had all the distances in the book.
So a couple friends & I headed out to the site. The book also had roads showing so I was able to navigate through the mountains to the general area. I found two roads that crossed which matched the map and went from there to the school house area. Not much later we saw two slabs of cement and knew we had the site. These 2 brown pics came from the book. The top red X is where I dug the coin.
So we set to digging signals, not finding much after an hour till I got a signal right near where the old front door must have been. It was only about 20 inches from the slab. It turned out to be this neat old coin, what a thrill !! You can see the edge of the foundation in the background, only about 2 inches thick. Also my Fisher 1266x.
That turned out to be the only coin found by us. We did dig some old bullets, fired & some junk metal.
This structure was very close to the school house slabs also. Never have found out what it was, made of stone & vacant inside. In future weeks we detected a bunch of other foundations, mine spills, etc but didn't really find much. Maybe it had all been worked over but they missed the school house because it was set off a couple blocks.
Hope I gave someone some ideas for their area. The secret to my trip's luck surely lies in researching at the library. steve in so az
This is the prize I dug at the site, an 1879 dollar, the only one I have ever dug.
It started out as a mining site in the mountains of Arizona that I had read of. It appeared to be large enough to consider detecting. After I had gone over all the printed material in the U of Az main library I stumbled across a "township survey" that was done by a company for the mine owners. I found this big book in the Special Collections part of the library. The report showed all the buildings, their distances from the roads & other buildings. What a find !
Then I saw this old picture of the school house, off to one side, now gone. Keep in mind I had all the distances in the book.
So a couple friends & I headed out to the site. The book also had roads showing so I was able to navigate through the mountains to the general area. I found two roads that crossed which matched the map and went from there to the school house area. Not much later we saw two slabs of cement and knew we had the site. These 2 brown pics came from the book. The top red X is where I dug the coin.
So we set to digging signals, not finding much after an hour till I got a signal right near where the old front door must have been. It was only about 20 inches from the slab. It turned out to be this neat old coin, what a thrill !! You can see the edge of the foundation in the background, only about 2 inches thick. Also my Fisher 1266x.
That turned out to be the only coin found by us. We did dig some old bullets, fired & some junk metal.
This structure was very close to the school house slabs also. Never have found out what it was, made of stone & vacant inside. In future weeks we detected a bunch of other foundations, mine spills, etc but didn't really find much. Maybe it had all been worked over but they missed the school house because it was set off a couple blocks.
Hope I gave someone some ideas for their area. The secret to my trip's luck surely lies in researching at the library. steve in so az
Ma Betty
Just had to kid you a little but hey, maybe Steve found it in 1881 or a little later?? Sure would make him a good ole boy if he is or was by still being able to go metal-detecting! 
