Adventures in Metal Detecting

A few years ago, I received a metal detector for Christmas. I took it out a couple of times but I never had any success with it so it soon found its way into the closet. Recently, I was out searching for prospective fossil hunting spots when I ran across piles of old bricks that had been broken up as the bulldozers cut a road through a new development. I found a few shark teeth just laying out, but the ponds produced no fossils. I switched gears to artifact mode as I explored the whole site. I found old broken glass and multiple areas with bricks strewn about. I dug in the piles of bricks at the edge of the road cut and found some old ceramics. I was getting excited.

The next day, I arrived with my metal detector, ready to find colonial treasure. A phone conversation with paleobum got me excited about what could be at this site. I quickly started looking around where he advised, but I didn't find much until I headed away from the road. The first find of the day was a solid iron wheel looking thing. It took me almost 45 minutes to dig it out, and its so heavy that I had to raise it out of the hole with a lever.

I detected around much of the site for a few hours, making finds all over the place. I found a mattock, a pick axe, some iron spikes, and an enormous iron auger snapped in two pieces. I left without any fossils, but still with a sense of satisfaction. I had found finally found something with the metal detector!

I showed the family all my finds and they were actually impressed - moreso than if I had brought home a 6 inch megalodon tooth. I was excited, too, because these finds were different than anything I was used to finding. I called up some people and described what I had found, and the concensus was that the place I was hunting was an old phosphate mine.

After the War of Northern Aggression, people down South had to quickly transform their economy. One of the ways they found was to mine phosphate along the Ashley River. They built these mining camps all up and down the river and sold the phosphate to rebuild. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into this endeavor! They used hand tools to dig down to the fossil bearing layer to harvest the rocks. The fossils used to be tossed aside, having no value in the phosphate trade. When they were done mining an area, they would just throw their old tools into the pit and go. This explanation certainly makes sense, considering all the tools I found.

Update - 6-29-2007 - I got an email from scubadoc and he is fairly certain he has seen something like the wheel piece before. Here is what he says about it:

After looking at that picture (nice picture, by the way!), I’m reasonably (99%) sure that that’s what it is…a mining cart wheel…it used to have a second one beside it…no kidding…from the looks of it, the large bulge is where a horse or mule harness would have attached to a hitch of some kind and allowed the cart to be steered/pulled, it could have also been simply pushed about by a couple of men in the mine. Or the “bulge” could have been a flat plate that attached to the bottom of the cart. The metal wheel and attachments were probably manufactured in Penn, and the entire cart assembled elsewhere and then shipped to the mine when ordered. Sort of a custom thing…as time progressed and rubber product came into being, the wheel would have had a rubber ring around the outside circumference allowing the wheels to roll around indoors without damaging the floor…my Dad’s had the rubber around the wheel and it is possible that there was rubber there at one time, but it succumbed to the elements and time. The “nail”, or bolt, on the outside of the wheel was probably an attach point for anchoring the wheel assembly system to the wooden box, or metal, in some cases, similar to how a pick-up truck bed is attached to the axle, but in this case, instead of it attaching on the inside to the axle, they attached on the outside. Just a guess…