Under the Sidewalks

by

Steve Lehto

Metal detectorists are always looking for virgin dirt – that soil that no one
has been over with a detector previously. Such areas are becoming more
scarce as time goes by, because people with detectors – like me – are always
looking for and finding such places to detect. Some detectorists become
disheartened at the thought: Hasn't every place been searched out by now? Of
course, the answer is No.

There are two kinds of places that every detectorist should remember:
those that haven't been discovered yet, because they are remote, overgrown, or
not what they appear to be – for example, a site of an old school where the
school hasn't been standing for over fifty years. When driving around we look at
the vacant lots, open fields and hidden dirt roads and wonder if they might lead to
such places. Finding such a place also often requires research and a little luck.
However, there are even better, likelier places to detect that may surprise you:
under the cement you walk on and drive by every day. The problem is you have
to search it when the cement isn't there. That window of opportunity will exist
whenever cement – such as sidewalks – is being replaced.

I live in a small town in southeastern Michigan that was founded in 1837,
the same year that we were granted statehood. One day this past spring I
noticed that a section of sidewalk near the local cinema was being torn out for
replacement. Guessing that the dirt below the sidewalk – a strip a few feet wide
and a block long – couldn't have been searched after the sidewalk was poured a
few decades ago, I visited the site one Saturday morning. Upon arrival, I was
told by the barber that I was the third person there with a detector since the day
before! This, obviously, is not a secret method I stumbled upon, but I tuned up my
detector and went to work.

Within ten minutes I found a strong signal which was quite shallow and my
detector suggested that it was an Indian Head penny at less than an inch of
depth. I poked the dirt carefully with my digging tool and out popped the tell-tale
greenish coin: a 1903 Indian Head in pretty good condition, albeit covered with
green copper crud that would have to be soaked off. I never saw the metal
detectorists who beat me to this spot, so I cannot tell you what kind of detectors
they were using, or why they missed this shallow penny. I can tell you that they
missed 21 other coins that I found that day. Most were wheat leaf pennies and
coins near the edges of the walk that I assume must have fallen into the cracks
over the years after the walk was in place.

Still, I was a believer. If only I could find other projects like this one, but be
the first on site! The next week, I lucked out. My brother told me that they were
replacing sidewalks in the town of Milford, just fifteen minutes away – and it
looked like this was a major tear out. I went there that day after work and sure
enough, they were re-doing all of the cement work in town from the curb to the
store fronts – both sides of the street – for the equivalent of two blocks. So far,
they had just started by tearing out a block's worth on one side of the street. They
laid out plywood sheets for pedestrians to walk on, but the dirt was exposed
everywhere else.

I tuned up and started searching the areas to the side of the boards.
Within ten minutes I got the same kind of signal I had gotten before: a shallow
Indian Head. I dug out a very encrusted Indian and continued searching. A few
minutes later I got a reading of an Indian Head at zero inches. I pinpointed and
moved my coil: an Indian Head penny was laying on the surface of the soil right in
the middle of a footprint! People were walking in and out of the store here and
stepping on this dirt-colored one hundred year old coin without noticing it. Having
found two Indians in one day I vowed to search every inch of soil exposed during
the entire project, and make as many trips back as necessary to accomplish the
task.

The work schedule looked like this: they would remove the old sidewalk
and curbs and after trenching and laying cables under the edge they would
remove another six inches of soil. They then replaced the soil with gravel, which
they topped with paving stones. This meant that I had two golden opportunities to
detect if I timed my visits right – once after the initial tear-off of the cement, and
once after the fill was removed. To top it off I was digging in dirt that did not have
to be carefully replaced, unlike the parks and school grounds I normally hunt.

In the first section of town I found a total of four Indian Head pennies –
almost all within an inch of the surface – and surprisingly few bottle caps or junk
targets. My detector does a fine job of discriminating those out, but here I was
digging any signal just to be sure I didn't miss anything. After all, this opportunity
only comes along so often.

In the next section of town, I hit it big. I found three nice coins all near each
other one day: an 1880s Indian Head, an 1863 Civil War token from a nearby
town's "Dry Goods and Hardware Store", and an 1886 Canadian Silver five-cent
piece. A day later, I noticed that the workers had scraped off another six inches
of fill in this area, so I rechecked it. The three coins I found the day before would
have been scraped out if I hadn't saved them. After an hour of fruitless searching
I was preparing to leave when I checked the ground near a backhoe which had
been parked for the night.

The detector gave me a very strong reading but the screen bounced
between indications of a half dollar and a penny. Having never seen my detector
confuse those two signals before, I carefully dug around it and soon pulled a large
coin – the size of a half dollar but clearly made of copper. I soon realized why the
machine had been "confused": I had found an 1806 Draped Bust large cent.

The workers moved up the other side of the street when they finished this
side, and I followed after them. Each night I drove through town around quitting
time, and when the workers were done, I'd break out my detector and get to work.
Soon I befriended shopkeepers who watched me every day and followed the
progress of my digs. A reporter from the Milford Times asked if he could do a
story on me. I agreed, but asked if he'd be kind enough to hold the story until the
project was done. This would make for a better story if I'd found more things –
and I didn't want any claim-jumpers out here.

I'm confident that I had this location all to myself for most of the time that I
was working it. After all, if others had been out there with detectors, some of the
things I found wouldn't have been there when I found them. The west side of the
street yielded more Indian Heads – most from the 1880s – a Seated Liberty
dime from 1857, a Standing Liberty quarter with no date and the largest coin I
have found to date. Four inches below the dirt after it had been shaved of all the
fill, I found an 1850 Bank of Upper Canada One Cent token. The token was legal
tender in Canada before it became its own nation, and is larger than a half dollar.
Solid copper, I noted how heavy it was when I pulled it from the ground, and
immediately thought it was too big to be a large cent.

Every day I was on site I also met people from the town who were curious
about what I was finding. I love talking to people who are curious because I know
it is a good way to encourage understanding of the hobby by those who don't
know exactly what it is we do. Every detectorist can tell stories about being
yelled at or questioned in a rude way: "What are you doing?!" "Who said you
could do that here?!" Not once did I encounter any such hostility, and in fact, I
experienced nothing but politeness from the townspeople I met. Of course, I was
careful to stay out of peoples' way, step aside when they were walking by, smile,
and I never entered the site until all the workers had cleaned up and left. One
morning I even had a police cruiser drive slowly by – two officers curious as to
what I was doing walking slowly through the dirt at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday
morning. I waved; they waved back.

In all, the town of Milford gave up more than three dozen "keepers",
including ten firsts for me. My oldest coin, my oldest silver, my first seated coin,
as well as one-of-a-kind tokens that I'm sure I'll never find the likes of again. More
importantly, I learned a valuable lesson by checking the ground beneath the
sidewalks of Milford. Although the virgin soil may not be the largest in area of the
places I've checked, it certainly paid off better than any other place I've checked.
Now, I've added signs of construction to the mental list of things I look for when
driving around -- in fact, it's at the top of the list.

Coins I found in Milford:

1 1806 Draped Bust Liberty Large Cent

1 1876 Seated Quarter

2 Seated Dimes -- 1888, 1857

1 1837 Seated Half Dime

1 Standing Liberty Quarter -- no date

1 1876 Shield nickel

1 1890 Liberty "V" nickel

1 1891 Canadian Dime

1 1886 Canadian Half Dime

1 1850 Canadian One Cent Token

1 1857 Canadian ½ Cent Token

1 1863 Civil War era token

27 Indian Head Pennies, most from the 1880s and 1890s.