Moving to California... North LA. Anyone else near?

[Gimmie The Loot]

Hello - not new to the forum but will soon be new to California. I have spent the last few years hunting a huge Chicago park from the 1860's. Despite many years of other hunters, we pull a seated coin out every so often, barbers every couple weeks, and indian pennies almost every day. Anything like this going on around the north LA area or am I going to have to change my hunting style?

Looking forward to making new MD friends!

Cheers - Jason

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

sounds like you're an accomplished turf hunter. There's a contingent of hardcore turf-hunters in So. CA/Los Angeles area, able to eak out silver from the park there too. But .... naturally .... the parks aren't going to be as old as your Chicago experiences. The few parks out here in CA that *might* be as old as the 1860s, tend to be now in the more blighted parts of towns, and thus filled with wino-caps, zinc, aluminum, etc.... As opposed to portions of the upper mid-west, or back east, and there's still some mid 1800's sides of towns, where ......... TO THIS DAY, they remain "upscale". But out here in CA, "urban flight" to the suburbs in the 1950s, seemed to create blighted districts of our older down-town parks. And go figure too, that all the migration was from east, to west. Meaning that a city here that had a population of ... say .... "5000" in 1940, now has a population of 50,000 now! But in the upper midwest, and towns back east, a town of 5000 in 1940, STILL has 5000 now Or heck, even got less people, in the case of the some of the upper mid-west (where agrarian lifestyles gave way to mega-farming techniques, drying up little farm-towns).

So it seems that most of the silver being farmed from the parks down there, is of the merc and roosie caliber, with an occasional barber or IH thrown in. I know of some parks up my way where I can reliably get a barber or two with each effort (and usually the desirable S mints, being that you're in CA now! ) But not sure how consistent that is in the L.A. area, since that place balooned out 100-fold, population wise, from the 1940s to the present.

The best way to hook up with turf-hunters down there, is to get on the "kinzli forum". That's where all the CA guys seem to post/read. To get to the main page, you have to be a member. So you'll need to take the time to pick a name and password. But once there, you'll bump into fellow turf hunters.

 

[Gimmie The Loot]

Thanks for the explanation Tom. I kinda figured even though LA is hundreds of years old going back to the Spanish, most of anything old was paved over in the suburban boom of the 40's and '50s. I definitely love to challenge myself with research so I reckin I'll be scouring old maps for mining camps, RR camps, stage lines etc... hope to find some trust worthy friends to join in the hunt.

Oh and I also homebrew some pretty tasty beers that I love to share!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

ha

hehe, anything of the Spanish/Mexican era (1770s to late 1840s) is LONG since asphalted over, down where you are. Oh sure, a few historic monuments (the sites of the missions themselves, a few preserved adobes surrounded by modern stuff, etc...). But by and large, so. CA has little of that era left, that you could actually get on, to hunt.

But up where I'm at (an hour south of San Jose), we have some areas that are still fairly rural in nature (ag crops, cow pastures, orchards, etc...). And within those areas, I've researched out sites that date to the land-grants/rancho era, contact-period indian rancherias, etc... And yes, at those, have found reales. And then we research out early western era sites (old stage stops, traveller spots, etc...) and can get some early seateds. old-town const/demolition sites is another way to tap into the early western era here too.

But in So. CA, you've got to figure that prior to about 1847, i bet the entire non-indian population (ie.: european influence) population of So. Cal. #'d probably only less that 5000? You know, a hundred here, a hundred there, etc... Terms like "villages" and "towns" were terms that could refer to a collection of a few neighbors, each a mile apart. So they were actually more of a "vicinity" name, rather than what we think of as "cities".

If/when you get up to this part of CA, look me up, and I'll show you a park we can "duel" at You bring the home-brew!

later, Tom

Thanks for the explanation Tom. I kinda figured even though LA is hundreds of years old going back to the Spanish, most of anything old was paved over in the suburban boom of the 40's and '50s. I definitely love to challenge myself with research so I reckin I'll be scouring old maps for mining camps, RR camps, stage lines etc... hope to find some trust worthy friends to join in the hunt.

Oh and I also homebrew some pretty tasty beers that I love to share!

 

[TerryC]

Jason, If you are strictly a parks guy, Tom has covered it all. If you want to find gold and silver, may I suggest the L.A. beaches? I haven't hunted the CA beaches since the mid '80s. Maybe Tom or someone else can bring us up to speed on the latest detecting laws for the beaches. I did pretty good (back then) on the San Pedro sand. I have a Fisher Impulse 8 (out of print) that has paid for itself 2 or 3 times over hunting NC, SC, and especially FL beaches. Maybe the CA beaches will do the same for you!. Good luck. TTC

 

[Gimmie The Loot]

Hi Terry - I am pretty open to detecting venues. I would love to detect on beaches... I should be doing it now along Lake Michigan to help me pay off some bills and get moving money! I started out at the beach here but quickly was lured to the parks in chase of old coins.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Hey loot, there's a lot of beach-hunters down there. The better ones (the hard-core ones spoiled on past good times) detest dry sand hunting (where targets are relatively random). So what the aces down there do, is study the swells, tides, and winds, and try to determine when the beaches will be eroding. It's hard to ever go back to dry sand hunting, when/if you've ever been in a pocket digging non-stop 400 to 500 coins, in an area the size of your living room! Trouble is, days like that are few and far between. Talk to some of the guys who were detecting down there during the 1982-83 El nino erosion, if you want to hear some stories that will curl your toes! (100 silver coins in a day, etc...).

There's not that much old or silver coins to be had on the beaches down there, so it's mostly angling for jewelry, is the beach-hunters goal. The reason for not a lot of old coins, is that back in the 1940s and '50s, the corps of engineers went and put those rock-groin jetty things about every mile or so, down vast stretches of the beach, in order to build out the beaches. And another reason is, the '82-83 storms were seeeoooo severe, that in some places, it's debatable if any old coins will ever show up again. Because places got washed down to friggin bedrock! Sure, coins should come back in with the spring buildup of sand, you would *think*. But ... all I know is, up here, there are some beaches that were hit so hard then, we rarely, if ever, get old coins off of them anymore, unless something scours further down, or further back in, than it did during that event.