I few who use a metal detecting here but old post.

We had a lot of one room school houses here, but back in the 1980's we had a guy that liked to burn things down, and he torched a lot of those old schools, as well as peoples hunting camps and such. Thankfully he never chose to burn people's living in houses.

My Father and Uncle went to a one room schoolhouse, and there they had to go haul water from a spring in a 5 gallon bucket long handles so that 2 people could carry it. Can you imagine kids today being required to lug their water by hand from a spring? The spring was next to a massive granite boulder, and to this day you can see where the settlers here used star drill and wedges to split blocks of granite out to make foundations and other things for their houses.

Sorry about the fuzzy photo, but this is Katie standing in front of that rock. It has some nice sized firewood trees around it as well.

 

Neat rock, I have seen pictures of rocks like that in the eastern end of Michigans UP, but never seen them first hand.
I have seen those huge bolders when Fishing up in Ont. Canada.

To bad about the burned down school houses. Many here in Michagan were turned in to homes or even up north cabins for city people. I would think if you can get permission a good place to detect still.

I am going to give it a try again today, a lot of the snow has melted and I have dulled all my chains so I need to take time to sharpen them after I spend some time searching.

Al

 

Where I live is still very rural (behind my house lies 7000 acres of forest without a house), and old burned camps, old cellar holes, and schoolhouses and blacksmith shops once dotted the area, so they are all accessible. Landowners can get a little territorial during hunting season, but most of the time, as long as you are just leaving footprints and not causing trouble, landowners do not mind people being on them.

I got a map from 1859 that shows the location of these old cellar holes, which were houses back when Maine was highly populated. Not connected to the almighty umbilical cord we call powerlines today, they could put houses up anywhere they pleased.

I once ran across an old foundation that was odd, maybe 15 feet square and obviously too small to be a house. Also, just a little ways off was another rock wall...it just did not make sense. So I went back and looked at my old map and sure enough it said S.M....being beside a small stream, it stood for Sawmill. And since that was in 1859, long gone except for the foundation.

You would never know it, but the most gorgeous stream runs between two swamps and then plunges down into a gorge. It is almost post card-like.

 

I would have to go back and take another photo, the area they knocked the granite blocks off from came from the opposite side of the rock then where Katie is standing.

Here you can determine when the blocks of granite were taken because star drill and wedges (called feathers) were used until about 1850, at which time steam drills took over which were far bigger bores.

 

Boy, that is wonderful to hear you have so much untouched land near you. Must be heavenly. I hate urban sprawl. I got it pretty good by me (but not quite like 7,000 acres!). I'm about 10 minutes from the town of Oconomowoc to my east, but every other direction is woods and farms for a long ways.

 

As a whole, there is nothing really here for working people, so in 43 years, my town has never increased or decreased. people move in, then on average, about 8 years later they move back out. Last year my town had 8 births and 10 deaths...so the population just stays the same at 750 people.

It is interesting though because I kind of feel crowded now. I say this in semi-humor because in 2008, during the housing market debacle, a lot of houses near me were deserted. Slowly others have bought these foreclosed houses up, so I got neighbors again.

But they are good neighbors, when the town found out I had cancer they were going to get together as a fund raiser, but this is the poorest county in all of New England, and I honestly have resources, I just don't like to part with them very easily, so I politely declined. But from that I learned how much they are behind me. I have never lived anywhere else, so there might be better places to live, just not for me.

 

My personal history is more in slate than granite, though my county has many, many granite quarries that were used to build some prominent buildings in Washington DC and beyond. Mosquito Mountain alone sent granite to build the Washington Monument, Senate Office Building, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, United Nations Building, Philadelphia Mint, Empire State Building and the Brooklyn bridge. Fort Know is not known nearly as well, but it's builders took brick and quarry construction to an amazing level in my opinion. I cannot lay brick on a floor and look good, much less make them stick in a four sided vaulted ceiling overhead!

I only found out about the slate quarry here when I was turning some forest into field and ended up bulldozing tons of slate. I shoved a few big slabs aside, but then started investigating. I found a website online about Maine quarries and found out just down the road about a mile was a major slate quarry of the day. It would be a lie to say I used a lot of it in my home, but did uses some, hand splitting the rock into 2 inch thick slabs to use in my entry way. (We are a shoeless house so its a great place to remove shoes for guests).

This is Fork Knox and their granite walls and vaulted brick ceilings.

 

Took the dectetor back in the woods this morning. Man the wind coming off Lake Huron is colder than a block of ice even though it has traveled a ways over land.
I think this is my 3d time out with it, learned a bit more also. need to have some thing to put my treasures in, Also think I will carry a square of old blue tarp to put my plug on and go thru.

so I found some sort of flat headed bolt I have not fully cleaned up yet with a nut that looks like a a thumb wheel.
A old 20 ga. plastic shot shell hull two chunks of wire and a half of chain link.

A hour and a half and my hands were froze and I was wearing gloves.


Al