Printable View
As Bucknut continues to uncover so many relics at his perfect site, I thought it may be interesting to share other "best" sites. My only virgin cellar hole gave up 30 to 40 important coins, my only three-copper hole, and one of my two GW buttons. The reason it was virgin was it doesn't look like a cellar hole at all. Just a pile of rocks with a cedar growing. Anyone else want to share your "honey holes?"
That's a tough one Drew. Here's one that maybe isn't my best site but my favorite. I had found a site way out in the woods, no trail leading to it. But when I look around I can see piled iron. Bummer, but I work the site for a couple of months and manage to find some goodies. I went back to the site after the leaves fell and I am detecting near a side wall and I look through the woods and can see another wall. Sure enough another cellar hole....and no iron stacked anywhere. This site gave up a bunch of early coppers, none younger than a DB. Also dug my USA button there.
But I never had a site that gave up 30-40 coins!
I guess three sites come to mind for me, each for a different reason. Our "Honey Holes" here in the Midwest are a lot different from your cellar holes in New England. Here are my best sites ever:
1. Two Cent Park This wonderful park right in the middle of a small town gave up three bucket list coins for me in three consecutive hunts; a Two Cent Piece, a Shield Nickel, and a Seated Quarter. The soil there is rich and black and easy to dig and I never encountered an unfriendly person in all of my visits. Here are my totals from this park:
42 Indian Head Cents
89 Wheat Cents
1 Two Cent Piece
2 Shield Nickels
5 V Nickels
14 Buffalo Nickels
13 Barber Dimes
5 Mercury Dimes
2 Silver Rosies
1 Seated Quarter
2 Barber Quarters
2. Silver Park I discovered this park by accident while on one of my drives. I found more silver coins at this site than any other, by far. There was nothing super old here but the amount of silver still astonishes me. In my first three hunts there I found 40 silver coins total. After pounding it pretty hard I ended up with 54 total silver coins from this park. Crazy! Here are my totals from there:
1 Indian Head Cent
170 Wheat Cents (!)
7 Buffalo Nickels
2 War Nickels
4 Barber Dimes
37 Mercury Dimes
4 Silver Rosies
1 Standing Liberty Quarter
5 Silver Washingtons
1 Walking Liberty Half
3. Stage Coach Stop/Tavern Site This is a very unsuspecting site with a small non-descript house on it. However, I have found three of my oldest silver coins there. My dad was with me for all three finds so that makes it extra special. This is a site that I'd like to get back into someday. Here are the three old silvers that I found there:
1808 Spanish One Real
1832 Capped Bust Half Dime
1845 Seated Half Dime
That's another tough call. One for sure would be the first ever site I detected at an old farm site that was being razed for a commercial development. The barn had fallen in on itself and the house was dozed into a pile of rubble. It looked like the house had burned before it was leveled. But swinging the site was amazing. One particular area I just got to the point of using my pinpointer to keep pulling merc after merc (and 2 Barber dimes). Eventually uncovered a rose glass bowl and lid in the midst. My guess is whoever lived there had been saving those dimes in the bowl, and lost them when the house burned or was torn down burying everything in shallow sand.
The other site I guess would be the site of the first city zoo, now a huge park in a not so good area of the city. I've pulled countless relics, IHs, and silvers including a few Barbers. One big notable was a flax bale seal commonly only found in the UK and to date I believe the only one of it's kind to be found in the US according to the gentleman in England who runs the database logging these seals.
It is very interesting reading other people's best spots. Thanks for sharing your stories! My best spot is my cottage up North near Mackinac Island...So many historical War of 1812 era/colonial/Native American/Fur trade items found up there so it is very special. And if you think what I have found is amazing it pales in comparison to 3 other local detectorists up there!
But I have 3 other sites that I would like to share...
Site #1 is a park only 10 minutes away from my work. I have visited it probably an average of 100 times per year the last 8 years during my lunch breaks. When I first detected it I met a guy with a CTX 30/30 and he said that the place has been pounded for years. My current silver coin tally is at 163 at this place! Included in this total is an 1791 1 Real and an amazing 1832 Capped Bust Half dime. It is near an old canal route that was built in the 1830's. It is quite large with lots of woods so I often just wonder around and dig anything iffy.
Site #2 is in my home town in Ohio. My friend and I detected what we call the Field of Dreams. It is a baseball field in a park. We have never found much in the park but it seems that no one ever detected the ball field. We have found over 60 silvers between us and about half were barbers. I found an 1882 seated dime and my friend also got a seated dime out of there. Lots of Buffs, V's, and Indians too!
Site #3 is a park only 2 minutes from my work! It too has been detected to death according to other people but to date I have found 118 silvers there.
Well it is nearly lunch time and its a nice day out so you know what that means....
One yard, 2 hours detecting.
Finding an unhit or very lightly hit cellar hole sites is very challenging but I've been fortunate to find a few .
One such site was hit by us on a few occasions , usually on the way home from other opportunities that were further away that we felt had more goodies . The site in question seemed like a later homesite (maybe 1830's to 1880's we had thought) by its construction and one the first time we hit it it didn't cough up to much and was kind of trashy , I think i squeaked out a holed indian (fatty) that was in poor shape. that was about it from the three of us so we didn't really think it had much more to offer so it was low on our radar to go back but again another time on the way home from other sites and we stopped there just to "kill an hour" and again it didn't give us much to write home about ( maybe a button ) . This site was almost written off but we stopped there to spend the last hour of a day because we didn't have anywhere close to home that was worth hitting or thought less than than this one. The yard to this homesite was large but overgrown and we located an odd depression at the back boundary wall , surprising there was a well next to it and we worked this spot but little was found . I had wondered off to the left of that wall and came up closer to the original cellar we had hit previously but I was still a good 150 yards away and I heard a decent sound on the ol'DFX , it was a toe tap (a protective shoe tip for an old boot) . I stopped and looked real well at where i was standing and i could just make out a pathway , I followed it away from the homesite and picked up a button until i came upon another edge of the yard wall and i searched a bit around there to no avail for more targets. I then proceeded to go back where the tap was found and again i could barely see a pathway going toward the homesite and I didn't take more than a few steps and I hit another button then another a few more steps along the path but then it seemed to get quiet again. I went back to the buttons and worked a circle and hit another button then an 1840's large cent , more finds were on the one side of the pathway going away from the homesite and then I hit it! for the next 20 minutes I could barely take a step without hitting a button , indian head , flying eagle , two cent a copper or even somekind of relic ! I had stumbled on a 30 foot by 30 foot area where picnics or clothes were washed or hung up. I think close to 60 coins were found by me and a few friends Attachment 70453 my first artillery button was found there Attachment 70455 a nice almost complete wooden keg spigot Attachment 70456 a very unique silver plated button , one of my favorites Attachment 70457 and trio of general service eagle coat buttons from the Civil war era that very well could of belonged to a soldier who lived at the homesite and is buried a few hundred yards away , this soldier was an African-American who served in one of only two all Black regiments from Connecticut and who I felt a very close connection to him after researching him and his home. we've been back many times after that third time and still pick up an indian or button but nothing like that day , that day was something else .
Dan
I knew you all would have favorite sites...they look awesome!
Follow up questions- Jared mentioned he's been to a site 800 times...how many times have you been to your fav sites and have you hunted them out (at least it's no longer worth the time for the amount of finds left)?
I've been to my fav cellar hole (guessing) 300 times in maybe nine yrs. I still go back once a season, if only for memories :lol:
Yeah I have a few that I have hit many dozens of times. Over the last few years I often find nothing at them but I don't care. They are just peaceful, secluded places to detect. The D2 has revived them somewhat, and it's ruining my peace and quiet. ;)
My Merc site I was only at the one time because now it's a commercial building. I have no idea how many times I've been to the old zoo, but countless over the last several years. The old zoo is vast, and over time I was able to mentally plot out where much of the activity was considering the location of the finds such as likely food or vendor stands. There's no actual map or documentation plotting out the original locations of anything there-at least that I could find over years of looking. The only indicators are a handful of old photos and postcards that are of very small areas and don't really clue me in on actual locations although I was able to figure out a few such as monkey island and the bison enclosure.
As for being hunted out, for the most part it is. Finds are very few and far between. All the "hot spots" I found rarely even give me iron grunts or even many pull tabs any more. There's a few areas with deep fill that have zero signals anywhere although I'm sure there's gotta be something good there under at least 2 feet of fill dirt as I did recover a couple very large period scrap metal items at those depths. The rest of the areas I haven't really hit much are tough as they are picnic areas with decades of trash layers-tons of pull tabs down to about 8 inches, foil, etc making it nearly impossible to detect as one will never be able to get any old items without first digging out a majority of the trash which could take years. This year I've really only gotten a few wheats, same as last year with the exception of digging a really iffy peep in iron and finding one lone barber dime.
Finding anything now within reasonable driving distance is a huge challenge. Not good at getting permissions and public areas within a 4-5 hour drive have all been pretty much picked clean.
I will share my favorite "lightly hit" cellar hole and it's all thanks to Del's "nose" for a site that doesn't look like a site. We hit a site in the morning that was probably hit many times in the past 40 years. There were very few finds made at that site. Del wanted to check out an "anomaly" further down the old road so the four of us marched down the path to an epic day. I always get excited when Del wants to check out an anomaly.
There were five GW buttons found that afternoon at the anomaly plus a three copper spill found by Del. Three more coppers were found and several other buttons. All at a little anomaly that Del sniffed out with his nose for sites. It was one of the most exciting digging days of my life.Attachment 70463
It was an epic day and one of my top three hunts ever , I had a feeling you'd mention it here and Davey got to be apart of it only because he was a last minute tag-a-long "with no more good places to hunt in Connecticut" :lol: where the video ??Quote:
Originally Posted by Donnie B
Here's the video but Dave left out one of my GW's! Grrrrrr! Lol! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnHqD6nIX7EQuote:
Originally Posted by del
That zoo site is in the hall of fame, Chris!
Yeah, Donnie, "CellarHole de Bergerac" (or Dan) can sure sniff out cellars! I always tell the story of us looking for a cellar, Dan finds it, I'm literally standing in front of it talking to him, he assumed I saw it as I was 5 ft away, I say, "well lets continue looking" and he says, "turn around, but don't fall in" :lol:
I don't know if it's exactly "hall of fame" material but that old zoo site sure did have a lot of hot spots even after years of hunters pounding it well before I got there. The trick mostly was to find those isolated areas that were missed in the past, and there were several. The baseball diamond gave up a lot of silvers before it was torn out including a really nice walker about 6 feet from a transformer with huge EMI output.Quote:
Originally Posted by OxShoeDrew
Another area was the grassy strips between curbs in a parking lot that gave up countless wheats, IHs, mercs and even a couple Barbers. That's also where I found that flax seal that wasn't supposed to be in this country...lol. Then there was another hot spot near the maintenance area parking lot that gave up loads of IHs. That area was previously homes that had been torn down to make way for widening the street and a parking lot.
The oddities are areas that really should have given up tons of the oldest items were mostly empty. The original amphitheater seating area, a soccer field (which only gave up a few wheats from around 10-18 inches), and even the pond which had rowboats in the late 19th to early 20th century. The pond where it wasn't too deep or overly mucky-especially by the launch site which still exists-gave up nothing. Just trash, a couple bike frames, etc. Worst thing is about 1/4 of the zoo was removed to make way for a short freeway branch into the slum.
It's the one thing that's the most infuriating about my region-they have no regard for historical preservation in the name of progress (money) which means paving over everything including the original 1890s stadium, 1850s racetrack, CW grounds and buildings, government buildings, parks, schools....it's all gone without a trace.