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Worth hitting Dozed, graded, scraped and filled land?

tinsmith

Elite Member
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Nov 20, 2013
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CT.
Been detecting about 6 yrs and of course I've hit parks n schools that have been filled and landscaped. Usually look for the older places. But a good question pops up here n there in the forum, What about old targets coming in the fill dirt? I here this now and then but wonder/wish there was a way of estimating the probability of old coins n targets in the fill? Like maybe where ground construction companies get their fill? How was it gathered? Or better- do they doze the land flat then backfill and blade using some or all of the original dirt! The latter would be great đź‘Ť.
Question is how can we assess whether the land is New or the Old/original dirt just smoothed over? Is this question silly or what?:roll:
 
Street tearouts and repaving often requires the old asphalt to be removed along with a determined amount of additional dirt to get ready for the sub base to be laid which is usually gravel. If this is in an old section of town?

Follow the dump trucks...see where they're moving it to, get permission and hunt away. Some of my best finds like 29 shield nickels, 1838 seated half dime, Barbers, Mexican Reales (1860's) confederate buttons, clay pipes, bottles, ect came from rooting through these piles of dirt.

One would of course rather say these finds came from the middle of a Civil War Battlefield following months of research while imagining what the heat of the battle must have felt like!! Was that a Cavalry horse that just raced by me to avoid cannon fire!!! nope, it was just another dump truck so I wake up and follow another load to it's destination!!:D
 
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Been detecting about 6 yrs and of course I've hit parks n schools that have been filled and landscaped. Usually look for the older places. But a good question pops up here n there in the forum, What about old targets coming in the fill dirt? I here this now and then but wonder/wish there was a way of estimating the probability of old coins n targets in the fill? Like maybe where ground construction companies get their fill? How was it gathered? Or better- do they doze the land flat then backfill and blade using some or all of the original dirt! The latter would be great đź‘Ť.
Question is how can we assess whether the land is New or the Old/original dirt just smoothed over? Is this question silly or what?:roll:

Unless you knew for certain, that incoming fill-dirt had come from some real-good-spot, .... I wouldn't bother. It would be a needle-in-a-haystack to hit random fill-dirt, on the odds that a "coin might have come in with it".

The only exceptions I can think of, is if you knew it was coming in from a red-hot spot.

I recall a old-town park demolition scrape (where they'd scraped off a few feet of turf) to make way for incoming artificial turf. The park dated to the 1870s. Some guys followed the outgoing trucks to find out where the dirt was being dumped. And were detecting the piles at that location. And got coins out of that.

But for the just "random fill dirt" ? No.
 
If a detectorist with minimal research ability cant identify a "good" spot from a nothing spot it's time to go back to school...
 
agree with Norm. and... I hunted a fill dirt lot before and made good finds. How? they had some top soil mixed in when scraping the lots. they spread it out, mixed red clay and lighter colored soil. a road grader is not exactly surgical in removal. when they get the hard pack layer, that means there was at one time a top layer, with human traffic. I have seen sidewalks done several times, and each time found something, although not many targets, some of the old dirt remained., some mixed in. the detector will tell. you never know. that's what they make metal detectors for....
 
One of my best finds (1800 half dime) was from a modern park that was filled and graded.

Admittedly, I was only there to test a new machine as the park is close to my house; I never would have hunted it otherwise, better to be lucky than good :cool3:

I did end up up gridding around the area of the half dime to be sure for about 4 hours (I mean, who knows :?:), and nothing but modern stuff (including a large gold ring, as it turned out :laughing:).

As others have said, I generally don't bother with fill and graded unless there is a reason to.
 
If it looks monkeyed around with and doesn’t show up on an older aerial... no. I simply go by the results I’ve had, and although anything CAN be anywhere...it generally doesn’t work that way. Much better results are had with “original ground” and trying to find those short duration weak repeatable high tones using a stock or monstrous coil. Even super trashy original ground can cough up a few keepers with a smaller coil but I’ve personally had WAY more success hunting deep...
 
I don't think it's silly to at least give a filled area a shot, mainly because I've had some good luck with it.

My house is pre-Civil War and the front yard was a cowhorsesheep pasture until 1960 or so when a pond was dug smack in the middle of it. All the dirt from the pond excavation was spread out over the remaining pasture area, like 2-3 acres worth.

I used the pasture to try to learn my machine, going mostly around the pond and finding lures, sinkers, some change, a muskrat trap, and a bunch of junk.
Over time I tried the fill area hoping to find maybe a kids toy or something from the previous owner. No toys, but 2 large cents, a 1858 Canadian half penny, and a Morgan silver dollar. Who knows what's deeper than my machine can see?

My neighbor owns the plot that had the barns to my house, and dug a foundation for an outbuilding. He used some of the dirt from that to fill in a couple of low spots on the strip of grass between us, and that little bit yielded a wheat penny.

So IME ya never know, and it's worth a few swings to find out.
 
I don't think any place is a waste of time, sometimes you just never know. Give it the once over and see what happens.
 
Most fill is taken from surface mining. Excavations on the other hand can run through older sections of towns. It’s usually a matter of right place right time.
 
I don't think any place is a waste of time, sometimes you just never know. Give it the once over and see what happens.

You know I've made at least half dozen nice finds walking off the park or school onto a path through the woods. Once went away from the park and quarter mile up a trail and just walked and spot checked small areas here n there. Hit a 5 foot bank off the trail, walked up the awkward neck high rise to hit the top because I was attracted to the beautiful emerald color moss atop the hump. Got one of the sweetest, clean hits and carefully sliced into that pretty moss 2 inches with the lesche knife. The shiny glistening 1964 Kennedy half, my first, came out a that mossy hump. Another time almost slipping and stumbling down a bank toward a little Creek. Dug a nice ornate Sterling cross! And more times similar finds off paths in woods, along stone walls, rings, colonial flat button and cool bullets. All with no research or plan. Your correct, you just don't know sometimes.
 
I always try out of the way places, I was just at a small pocket park near the water and spent 40 minutes digging up all manner of trash, good solid numbers and nothing but trash, do I regret it , no, but you have to try, and it being a nice view didn't hurt, I ended up taking a seat and just enjoying it.
 
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