Part of Historic Map of St. Lucia Showing Fort Capron and Fort Pierce.I've been looking for an older topographic map of South Hutchinson Island in the hope of answering a question sent in by one of this blog's readers and found this interesting map from 1855 showing Fort Capron, which I've been talking about lately. That is an interesting story that provides a lot of hints.
If you want to see the entire map, here is the link.
http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/maps/galleries/county/stlucia/index.php
I also discovered this utility that allows you to look at the entire coast, and more, taking an aerial view. It is quite amazing what all you can see - even features underwater near shore. You might find it as useful as I did.
http://www.terrafly.fiu.edu/
It seems the internet really has a lot of resource tools these days. The problem now isn't so much finding out if something is on the internet, the problem is sifting through everything to find exactly what you want. There is just a lot of stuff out there.
Kenneth B. from Kentucky, and one of the Garrett users counted in my last survey, sent in the following links, which you might also find useful.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo/florida/
http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/us_states/florida/topos/armymap.html
http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/us_states/florida/topos/index.html
http://www.historicmapsrestored.com/USGS/Florida.html
http://scholar.library.miami.edu/floridamaps/about.html
Those are some good research tools.
Sometimes I have too much to write about and can only post a fraction of what I have. That is the case today. I'll get to some of the other topics over the next few days.
Some people have been asking me about where certain things were found. That's natural. But remember, your not looking for what has already been found, you're looking for what has not yet been found.
I recently mentioned how there are some deep and hard to dig artifacts out on some of the front beaches now. Sometimes the hole keeps getting filled in by the waves. one thing you can do in a situation like that is what is shown in the photo below.
Use the sand from the hole to create a dam on the lower side to help keep the waves from getting into the hole. This particular hole is about a 1.5 feet deep and the same wide. The artifact was laying near the top of a layer of rock, which was under a little more than a foot of sand.
Empty Hole.
Did I mention Arkansas Bill yesterday? I don't remember. Anyhow he used to travel through Florida in the spring when Fort Lauderdale was the place to be, hitting all of the top Spring Break beaches. He lived out of his van during those trips and did quite well using an Aquanaut 1280 picking up a lot of modern gold. Anyhow on one of his trips down to the Keys he managed to find some nice Tumbaga bars. Although he didn't show them off much, is someone saw one of the bars, he would tell them that they were lead. People who didn't know any better believed him.
When working the Spring Break beaches, he mostly worked the dips right in front of the beach. I'll get into some of those techniques more some other day.
There wasn't room to walk between the beach blankets sometimes in those days.
It seems that most people aren't buying the 'cleaning the grates' story anymore. In fact some people are telling me that they know it isn't true. I won't say one way or the other. First, it doesn't really matter much to me what they are doing since it is in a leased area, and, second, everybody knows about the wrecks around there anyhow.
A Very Common Type of Ring Design That Has Been Used Through the Ages.Snake designs have been used in jewelry almost as long as time. Some designs, like this one have been use for centuries. You can most easily identify the era of some of these age-old designs from the type of manufacture and any markings that might be found. If you hunt very long you might find several of these snake rings.
This particular one is fairly large and heavy. The eyes are diamonds.
I haven't even started some of the topics I had in mind for today, but I'm running out of time. I got into too many miscellaneous items today and didn't think that I would even get a post done.
Conditions and Forecast.
The wind is now from the east and the seas are running two to three feet on the Treasure Coast. That isn't enough to change beach conditions significantly.
The seas are expected to remain at current levels for a few days. It looks like maybe Monday they'll pick up some.
Have fun,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
