Colorado Kidd
Jr. Member
- Feb 19, 2007
- 93
- 7
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab Sovereign XS-2a pro, Tesoro Tiger Shark, Ace 250
Hi all,
I am working on a house (Finish Carpentry) way out in the country on a beautiful piece of property at the edge of the La Garita Mountains. There is a creek and a Cottonwood grove with a great view of the San Luis Valley to the east. I was talking to the owner about the history of the place and he told me there used to be a trading post and stage stop there and pointed out a flattened mound in the field and said that was the old adobe trading post. He said it went back to 1850. That got my attention because that is pretty early for the San Luis Valley. There were'nt many people here then. Zebulon Pike came over the Sangre De Cristo Range on the eastern side of the valley in 1807. There were a few spanish settlements further south and Taos was the major population center about 100 miles to the South. During the Winter of 1848-1849 John Charles Fremont led an expedition into the La Garita mountains looking for a way for the railroad to get through the mountains along the 38th parrallel. He was trying to get to the Gunnison River valley and west to the pacific. Instead his party got lost in the mountains just west of the site of this trading post and they met with disaster. They ended up eating all of their mules and some of the dead members of the party. Their party would have had to pass withing 2 or 3 miles of the trading post site on there way up Carnero Creek. So this is pretty early history for the valley.
Yesterday I asked for permission to metal detect and he said any time. Cool. The only problem now is going to be concentrating on my work with that site only a couple hundred yards away.
I only had about 30 min. to hunt. There were many many targets and the third one turned out to be an old guilded cufflink with some kind of stone in it. It looks old to me. Maybe military. It appears to be brass. Then I found a large rifle cartridge. It's head stamp says U.M.C. 38-56. I googled it and found that it was a Winchester fired black powder cartridge with a wooden bullet. Never heard of that. Maybe it was used as a non lethal method of Indian control as the Utes and Appaches were active in the valley at the time. It appears to have been made in the 1880's.
Digging up one signal I found large amounts of animal bones and glass shards so I'm pretty sure it is a dump. I'm hoping there are some early bottles in there. The ground all over the field is littered with blown glass frags.
Here are some pics:
Here is the cufflink.
Here's the back:
Here is a neat little horseshoe with hand forged nails, a buckle of some kind, and a thing.
Here are some shotgun shells, the u.m.c. cartridge and some more things.
I know there have to be some coins there. I'll be hunting there for about an hour after work every day this week. Later today I'm heading back the Ghost town for my first real hunt. I'll be posting the results later tonight. Man, this is one great hobby! Thanks for looking and I wish you all virgin sites to hunt.
I am working on a house (Finish Carpentry) way out in the country on a beautiful piece of property at the edge of the La Garita Mountains. There is a creek and a Cottonwood grove with a great view of the San Luis Valley to the east. I was talking to the owner about the history of the place and he told me there used to be a trading post and stage stop there and pointed out a flattened mound in the field and said that was the old adobe trading post. He said it went back to 1850. That got my attention because that is pretty early for the San Luis Valley. There were'nt many people here then. Zebulon Pike came over the Sangre De Cristo Range on the eastern side of the valley in 1807. There were a few spanish settlements further south and Taos was the major population center about 100 miles to the South. During the Winter of 1848-1849 John Charles Fremont led an expedition into the La Garita mountains looking for a way for the railroad to get through the mountains along the 38th parrallel. He was trying to get to the Gunnison River valley and west to the pacific. Instead his party got lost in the mountains just west of the site of this trading post and they met with disaster. They ended up eating all of their mules and some of the dead members of the party. Their party would have had to pass withing 2 or 3 miles of the trading post site on there way up Carnero Creek. So this is pretty early history for the valley.
Yesterday I asked for permission to metal detect and he said any time. Cool. The only problem now is going to be concentrating on my work with that site only a couple hundred yards away.
I only had about 30 min. to hunt. There were many many targets and the third one turned out to be an old guilded cufflink with some kind of stone in it. It looks old to me. Maybe military. It appears to be brass. Then I found a large rifle cartridge. It's head stamp says U.M.C. 38-56. I googled it and found that it was a Winchester fired black powder cartridge with a wooden bullet. Never heard of that. Maybe it was used as a non lethal method of Indian control as the Utes and Appaches were active in the valley at the time. It appears to have been made in the 1880's.
Digging up one signal I found large amounts of animal bones and glass shards so I'm pretty sure it is a dump. I'm hoping there are some early bottles in there. The ground all over the field is littered with blown glass frags.
Here are some pics:
Here is the cufflink.
Here's the back:
Here is a neat little horseshoe with hand forged nails, a buckle of some kind, and a thing.
Here are some shotgun shells, the u.m.c. cartridge and some more things.
I know there have to be some coins there. I'll be hunting there for about an hour after work every day this week. Later today I'm heading back the Ghost town for my first real hunt. I'll be posting the results later tonight. Man, this is one great hobby! Thanks for looking and I wish you all virgin sites to hunt.
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