discovered- possible Chinese mining camp western WA

Zse

Full Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2012
Messages
119
Location
Crazytown
Hey everyone! I seldom post my adventures but thoroughly enjoy perusing everyone else's finds. A few weeks ago I found an interesting looking area while gold prospecting on a local river and today the family and I made the trek down to explore the spot with detectors. No research took us to this remote area about 1/2 mile off the trail, it just looked good.

What we found was not what we expected. Normally my wild goose chases produce very little so we were surprised to find a smorgasbord of targets to dig. The first hole produced a blacksmith made felling wedge that I am going to restore (and maybe use :roll:). It was under some significant roots at the base of an old growth cedar tree, so right away we knew there could be old finds. The next 4-5 interesting things were all round balls of mixed size , then I pulled up the lead dice. I've never found a dice (die?) before so that's really cool. The hair clip (?) and cash coin came up towards the end of the hunt as we were being pushed out by heavy rains.

Throughout the hunt we found virtually no modern trash, and all finds were surface to about 4"... Nothing real deep. I know the Chinese were mining an area about 6 miles to the east in the 1860s, but I have no documentation putting them in this valley... Ever. Yet someone camped there, and it was a long time ago!

I have a question about the round balls, what the heck are they? Are they actually musket balls? I am confident they are not fishing related. To find musket balls in western Washington would be quite remarkable. I will try to get some accurate diameter measurements in the next day or so to hopefully help id.

I'll definitely be cleaning out this spot well..

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HH...
Zse
 
Cool finds! Good luck finding more Zse. I've found a few coins and musket balls like yours around the Tacoma area. I suspect there were many Chinese in western WA in the late 1800s.
 
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