Pioneer Cemetary Hunt

spotz

spotz

Bronze Member
Jan 16, 2005
1,304
8
Stanfield, Oregon
Well I did it! I was out at a small city park next to the Police Dept this afternoon. One of the senior officers who I have known for 25 years came out to see how I was doing. ( Which was nothing much.) He tells me that our local Pioneer Cemetary ( which was on my list of potential hunts ) has just last week been cleaned up & de-brushed with the use of some inmate labor from the county corrections facility. He says " It's a nice afternoon & I think you should go out there & see what you can find. Being a former carrear LE person as well as a loyal small town citizen, I threw everything in the back of the truck & hauled a-- out there. The oldest surviving tomb stone is dated 1872 & the newest 1901. There are supposed to be 35 grave sites, but only 21 identifiable graves remain. The site is just dry cheat grass & sage brush. The sage smelled oh so good & it was a fine afternoon. No one disturbed me. It was very peacful & I really enjoyed my time there. I spent about 4 hours & the only coins I found were clad. Two cents & a 69 Quarter. I found 2 square nails, old mashed tin cans & half a dozen twist top beer bottle caps. It was a fine experience & I will go back for some photos to post tomorrow if it is nice out again. I didn't take time to come home to get the camera.

We thrashed this topic around a couple of months ago. I just wanted to post the facts of the hunt. Nothing was desicrated in any way & it was like visiting unknown friends from the distant past. I was dissapointed not to find any old coins, but I'd do it again anytime I had the chance. It really made me feel a bond to the history of our little town's history that really got it's beginning in 1863 with the establihment of a stage stop called 12 mile house. Spotz
 

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Cool story Spotz,Hope the dated stuff pops up on your next visit.Hope thats all that pops up.HH
 

it seems from reading the various posts on hunting graveyards that people really didnt lose many coins in them. it doesnt look like there are any outstanding finds being posted from people hunting graveyards.i wonder if the outskirts of the cemetary might be more productive.....you know,where someone may have laid thier jacket down to go visit a grave or where someone may have hitched the horse or parked the car. just a thought.
 

Sounds like someone beat you to it (IMHO).

We used to hunt graveyards back in the 80s and finds lots of Indian heads & Buffalo nickels more than anything else. We started hunting them because all the schools/parks were becoming cleaned out of the old/good stuff by then (for the most part).

Some of the best Indian heads I've ever found were in cemeteries and usually 5 to 10 per trip,

a LOT of early date (1860s/70s)

at that time, we were finding most of them 8 to 10 inches deep (and usually on the outer areas) not anywhere near over the graves.
 

Sounds like it was a nice peaceful day. :)

Nana
 

Cool story Spots...
Sounds like ya had a nice day regardless of the finds... Better luck next time...
I don't see anything wrong with hunting a craveyard. I'm not sure how close I personally would dig to a Tomb stone, but to each his own... I'm sure the people there enjoyed the visit... ;D
 

hey lonewolf,is that why most people endorse hunting private yards nowdays? because graveyards,schools,parks,ect have been mostly hunted out? from what i understand, detecting was really popular in the late 60s through the 70s and kind of quited down through the 80s and 90s. it seems to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity now . i guess that would explain the abundance of clad that i find but the lack of silver.hell...wheaties are even hard to come by. am i correct in my thinking?
 

I went back this afternoon for a couple of pix. As you can see, there is not a lot of traffic here. I was expecting Indian heads & such too, but no luck. It was still a great outing. It was powder dry there so maybe I'll try it again after a good rain. Spotz
 

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hollowpointred said:
hey lonewolf,is that why most people endorse hunting private yards nowdays? because graveyards,schools,parks,etc have been mostly hunted out? from what i understand, detecting was really popular in the late 60s through the 70s and kind of quited down through the 80s and 90s. it seems to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity now . i guess that would explain the abundance of clad that i find but the lack of silver.hell...wheaties are even hard to come by. am i correct in my thinking?
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It may have slowed in the number of people entering the hobby during the 80s/90s hollowpoint (not sure without doing the research on statistics) (but) the guys that are/were true treasure hunters, and or diehard detectorist were not slowing down. In-fact, they were stepping up the pace. I also personally know people that were buying machines during these times who never owned one before-hand.

The 80s/90s were when a lot of guys already had 10 to 20 yrs in with the hobby, and newer/better machines were being made with computer chips/tech. Guys were retiring the old BFO and TR machines and running to buy the new Garrett's and Whites with computer chips, and new ground balancing tech. etc. People also had more disposable income thru-out the 90s because of the biggest/longest running economy "boom" the USA has ever seen. This allowed many to enter into the hobby.

For a good while, you could go to the parks, and schools, etc. that were previously hunted, and find a lot of things (cons, relics, etc,) that were missed by the old detectors because there were few machines previously that could get much depth over 4 or 5 inches. There were some, but not many. There were also other "issues" with a lot of the older machines that caused guys to miss a lot of targets.

It has been 35 to 40 yrs strong now that guys have been hunting the same parks, schools, play-grounds, etc. and in the last 20, there has been constant up-grading in machines through the computer aided and added tech. This all lends to why there's not much silver/etc. being found these days in those types of places. I'm not joking (and you can ask Jeff or some of the long timers) that when I say, back in the 70s/80s you could litterally walk away from a school or park with a hand-full of silver after a days hunt. I personally got into detecting in 1977 or there-abouts, and I remember until around the mid 80s being able to pull 20 to 30 or more silvers in one day if you hunted hard. There were also still a lot of "virgin" sites back then. The last true virgin site as far as an old park goes that I have personally found/hunted, was approx. 12 yrs ago here in MI in a small town area on the outskirts of town. You don't even want to know what I found in that place as far as coins, and the number of coins over a 2 yr time span because it'll make you want to throw your detector away! lol

These days, it's hard to come away from an old school/park/etc. with 1 silver coin or one old coin of any type. It does happen, but, the places to hunt now are found through researching where old places used to be (schools/churches/etc.) and being the 1st one to hit the vacant lot (if it's vacant) and or, old home-steds, const. sites/etc. (it depends on what part of the country you're in too though, and what you're looking for) I mean, on the east coast, those guys can search corn fields and find coins dating to the 1600s/1700s, and the guys in the south can hunt fields and find civilwar stuff.. The same goes for water/beach hunting these days too, 20 yrs ago you could find lakes/etc. that were untouched and walk away with 25 to 40 rings in one days hunt. Now it takes a yr to 2 or more to find that many.

I still hunt wherever/whenever I can though because I'm in it until the day I can no longer walk/swing a detector no matter what! I personally think it's the greatest hobby on the face of the planet, and it's in my blood.

HH

Lonewolfe
 

I,m Kinda with Minelab on this one but I have heard that the social gathering or the wake in the old times would be held at the cemetary or just outside of it. I definetely would not want to be among the Headstones but thats just me.It is a Beautiful Area though and thanks for Posting the Pics. HH

LoneWolf thanks for the Motivational story too. LOL Did Ya Leave anything for us. ;D
 

thanks for the insight lonewolf. interesting read.
 

:) that's nice when nobody bugs you ~ I didnt see any orbs in those pics from the gyard ~ Ghost hunters would know what I am talking about ~ Rusty
 

:o interesting I just watched a show on Disc. Ch. that showed many pics taken at the Gettysburg site - some say with 51k Americans perishing at the epic battle - that "its the most haunted place in America"
Now if you could only get your hands on some of that lead ! (note pics had orbs but I digress)

Rusty Nails
 

Ya gotta love those old "Gun Smoke" tombstones.

Good hunting.
 

Minelab1000 and Floater got my vote here.......I recently visited my father in TN........He coaxed me to go to a few places with him (Which I did) to see what i could find,,,,,One of the places was the graveyard & Church where HIS farther is buried..
There are ALOT of civil war graves in there,ard he tried to coax me to go around them but I just couldn't........I felt like I was being disrespectful (Cause Grampa & Great Grampa were buried there) but He thought it was OK.........I did go around the church though...............Only found Clad.....Either its been cleaned out or they've settled deep....Maybe now that I gave my dad an old 1210
Fisher He might try it ?
 

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Omnicognic, heres that closeup you requested of the cross

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