My 1920 House And 1800s Neighborhood Park

[nickelNdimed]

I haven’t posted anything significant in a while. I moved mid year and changed role at work.  It has been busy getting settled in and sorting out some things at the house, getting up to speed at work, life.  It has been tough getting away to detect.  But I also just walk to my detecting spot now.  Anyway, wanted to post my more notable finds this year from my new to me 1920 house and neighborhood 1800s park. These were found with my Equinox 600 and Vanquish 440. Hope to have more time to detect this year now that we are more settled.

From my front yard and part of backyard I found wheats from 30s-50s, a 40s Merc, an old clock winding key, and lots of nails.  The house has been mostly renovated and has probably had a few roofs over the years, so lots more nails to remove. It also has had two additions on crawl space so some of the back yard was lost to that and the 2 car garage.  Work has been done on sewer line and buried gutter drains so a lot of the yard has been disturbed over the years. I’m hopeful there are more goodies in rest of yard and masked by the nails.  We’ll see what next year brings. These finds show some potential.  

From the park, I’ve only hunted some areas scouting for potential and only gridded one area mostly for surface finds where a festival was held.  I had better luck than I expected.  Found a modern silver ring, a modern token, random clad and spills not shown.  But what was interesting were a few signals I could not ignore that were good and deeper than surface.  So I took the time to dig those.  I also can’t resist a good nickel signal so I often dig those as well.  I managed to pull a no date Buffalo about 6” or so and an old watch fob, slightly damaged with typical of early 1900s designs. This was a higher tone about 8”.  Wasn’t a silver coin like I hoped but I’ll take it. Anyway, there is lots of trash typical of a park and plenty of acreage so hopefully more interesting finds to come after thoroughly gridding and cleaning up areas.  Oh, the old religious pin I found in a different area a while back just digging all signals.  Never know what you will find in those hunted out spots.  

 

[Valens Legacy]

Nice hunting, good luck on your next hunt.

[NCtoad]

Congrats!  I really like that watch fob!

[GB_Amateur]

Excellent start!  Have you used HistoricAerials.com?  That can help a lot with old parks.  Even the USGS topos there (which typically go back much further in time than the photos) might show you some buildings that are no longer present -- e.g. maybe a concession stand, swimming pool change-rooms,...  🤞

[Tom_in_CA]

good report.  Like an archaeologist' journal !   🧐

[schoolofhardNox]

Some good finds, especially the  older ones from the park. Love the watch fob.

[Cal_Cobra]

Love the watch fob!!  If you only have to walk to the sites to get that, imagine what must be in short driving distance?

[dogodog]

Great finds and report. Pin and fob are very cool. I'm sure their is a bunch more goodies to be found soon, Wish you luck and looking forward to an update.

[nickelNdimed]

Watch fob is probably my favorite so far. Yes, hopefully more good finds to come!  Looking forward to the spring.

 

11 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Excellent start!  Have you used HistoricAerials.com?  That can help a lot with old parks.  Even the USGS topos there (which typically go back much further in time than the photos) might show you some buildings that are no longer present -- e.g. maybe a concession stand, swimming pool change-rooms,...  🤞

I’ve used them before but on this park I have been using the city GIS.  Good reminder. I’ll have to try it and see if I find something different than GIS aerials. Older ones are pretty blurry. Park has changed over the years but I have done a little research on it and have a few areas of interest. The thing is I am trying to hit not so obvious areas as this park is frequented by detectorists hitting the obvious spots. 

 

6 hours ago, Cal_Cobra said:

Love the watch fob!!  If you only have to walk to the sites to get that, imagine what must be in short driving distance?

So I din’t just move here to detect but it was one reason. I now don’t have to drive here!  As I get to know neighbors and meet people, I’ll have to work in the request to detect their yards : ) It is an old neighborhood and hundreds of houses so it is a good place to be. 

 

[nickelNdimed]

I actually remembered a story from a neighbor that grew up in the area I thought this crowd might appreciate. We were talking about how he came to live at his house facing park.  He grew up in a different part of the neighborhood and used to walk to the park to swim. When he did that he would walk to pool barefoot as that saved him the dime for the locker for clothing. So, he would walk through grassy areas and streets that had grassy curb strips.  His current house is on that route facing the park and he used to think that was where all the rich people lived. They really were and still are modest houses but he wanted to live there someday and now he does. 
 

Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool and also made me think about the kids that did bring that dime or other change and other things they may have dropped on grassy areas on way to the pool or other activities at the park.  Like maybe that’s how that watch fob ended up there!