Detecting old Pre-Civil War Fort I arrive in my home town, Santa Clara , New Mexico and visit family. My old friend and Social Studies teacher from Junior High School has been waiting for me to arrive. He is the only one that knew I was coming to town besides one family member. I call him up and go to his house. We have so much to catch up on but I remind him that my time is limited and we should hit the road to the fort site and talk on the way. I only have a couple of hours to play around there. We talk about old times and I have a hard time getting used to calling him by his first name like he wants me to. He is a good friend but old habits die hard, especially when I respect the man so much. We arrive at the site and he explains the layout and shows me old maps of the site and positions of buildings.
He explains that the site is going to be destroyed soon. The owner of the property has subdivided it and is selling it in one acre lots. The sad thing is that in a few months there will be people living on the site in trailer houses! Another historical site gone forever. My friend bought one of the lots with two other people. If they hadn't done this...there would be no excavation of the site and no record at all!
After the history lesson of the site he says to start detecting and tell him where to dig by putting an "X" on the spot to dig. The ground is dry and hard but they have removed the top layer of vegetation with a small loader. I start swinging the coil of my Goldmaster V/SAT and there are targets everywhere!!! Lots of Iron targets which turn out to be square nails. I do get some nice signals and they turn out to be nice stuff. I tell my friend that I found what seems to be a nice signal so he comes over with his shovel and starts to swing it like a madman. I thought at first that maybe there was a rattlesnake there that I didn't see! But no, it's just the way he digs the targets. This nearly causes me to have a coronary!!! I can't believe that this is the way he digs good targets. I told him that my heart couldn't stand detecting a site like this while he practices this form of excavation. He laughs and says there's plenty here. I warn him that one day he will put a big gash into a very valuable target and then he will be sorry. The good targets he dug up that day were percussion caps, lead balls (bullets) and pewter buttons.
One item turns out to be a piece of a clay pipe. He tells me that he has more pieces to a clay pipe at home and this might be part of it.
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