- May 9, 2012
- 23,965
- 81,304
- Primary Interest:
- Other
Okay, if not mistaken 13 holes. Permission and all excavations agreed upon, and property owners and original partners doing the work. Most holes maybe 20 or 30 feet across (with sloping to prevent caving in on us) around 20 ft deep. No rock, no trash, nothing to be found but clean dirt, at at the bottom, a single clue, most often encased in grey clay. A few of the holes were larger, the map site started as the rest, but as we found more and more, the hole grew to the above stated size, with the last several feet of most of it done with shovels due to our findings and trying to preserve everything as is. Quite large. When we uncovered the originally planned vault location (locals vegetables storage telling you unwanted people knew the location) we had an area probably 40 yards by 50 yards dug to bedrock. The hole blasted into the bedrock by the cachers itself was around 50 ft across, and averaged 10 ft deep. In the bottom of this excavation we found spalled rock, handmade wooden ladders and work platforms, old drilling tools for blasting, and several quarried blocks near 2 ft square by 5 ft long. This site, as mentioned in the codes, was the originally planned burial location. Next big one was where we got off on one of the incorrect paths, that lead us to believe, again, this was certainly it. Nearly 2 weeks, 3 people on machinery, moving about the width of two football fields side by side, to the 75-80 yardline averaging 15 to 20 ft deep. Immense. We changed the landscape. Machinery used was a 120,000 pound trackhoe, a large cat dozer, and the biggest rubber tired backhoe you can haul on a trailer without a permit. In the end, we found not a single thing here, covered it over, backed up in the code, found where we were lead astray, and again proceeded. Talk about busting your bubble this one nearly ended the project for all. Generally, after the first couple shiwed clues deep, we stopped hand digging till around 3 ft from bedrock which was found by steel probe testing every couple buckets. Even with these orecautions we accidently moved a couple pointers but luckily were able to figure it out. Only a couple times were pointers buried shallow. Once, a pointer was accompanied by a plow point. The next marker, the one being pointed to, was 10 inches deep, around plowing depth. Material moved ? That is a joke. We moved over the complete course of the project no doubt over 1 million cubic yards in my opinion. Every year we spent the hot months digging. Sometimes weeks on end, every day, all day. And to think the cachers did all this with horses, mules, and drag pans. All holes save the vault hole have been documented along with everything found, and returned to their near beforehand appearance. Seems insane i'm sure but this is how sure we were of our wirk. We were intent on proving it, and working it to the end, although, like i said above there was a time or two we were 50/50 on throwing in the towel. By the time we both sat up all night studying in it, we both would doubke down, back up, find the alternate path, and go again.
That will not be duplicated any time soon...
Oak Hill dig in Danville VA. Left a few folks with looks like they smelled something bad in the fridge. And they too had permission. Can't make it easier for others seeking permissions.
Unrelated. But digging and Beale in a grand manner...
In 1863, General Edward Fitzgerald Beale came down from his 300,000-acre Tejon Ranch to take over a roadwork project in Fremont Pass, south of what would become the town of Newhall. The project had been started some years earlier by Beale's old battlefield adversary – Andrés Pico.
With picks and shovels, Beale's men cut a spectacular 90-foot-deep, vertical-sided gash through the mountain, enabling stagecoaches to enter the Santa Clarita Valley from the south and improving the single transportation linkage from Los Angeles to Fort Tejon and points north.
(https://scvhistory.com/mentryville/mstory.htm)
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