Unearthing Treasures Lost by the Icemen

[Music] folks well today we are out in the mountains and the black flies and the mosquitoes now so bad today but the deer flies are insane they're all around my head and I have a feeling they're gonna be all around my head all day I thought the place that we're going today I'm pretty excited about I've been instructed by the landowner to hike aways on this trail like I guess you could call it until I find a clearing in the middle of this clearing is a cellar hole from what used to be an ice cutter in the 1800s and earlier in order to keep your food cold people would buy ice from people called ice cutters and essentially they had a little pond that they would cut ice out of and sell all summer and apparently that's what this place was operated until probably the early 1900s when it went out of business it's out here somewhere it's beautiful - the deerflies [Music] I'm still walking along this trail and it is absolutely gorgeous out here where I'm in this big stand of pines at the moment but they're still like this blanket of ferns everywhere gorgeous anyway I was walking along and something white caught my eye I look down check this out right next to what I believe are some moose tracks check it out first time I saw it I was like is that a chicken egg obviously it's not a chicken egg it's a turkey egg that's not funny what a place to pick to lay your egg beautiful out here all right let's keep going [Music] oh I don't know if you're gonna be able to see it but there's a moose through there he's gone it is a female so if it has babies I don't want to go too close no she's gone just like that oh man I'm shaking you know you always have a idea in your mind of how big a moose is you think like a horse sized they're nowhere near the size of of course there's so much bigger taller you know their body off the ground the legs are long it's incredible how big they are it moved silently and I was walking through pretty pretty quietly to arrive to the site and I just looked up and it was just giant brown mass standing there looking at me and it just very calmly and quietly walked off into the woods hopefully you were able to see some of that but if not you'll just have to take my word for it I guess that was incredible all right little bit further I guess [Music] all right well I do believe we're here there's a big clearing I don't see the tree stand if they told me about on the edge of the clearing but there's a big cellar hole in the middle of this so this is definitely the spot so there's the big hole in the ground I don't see any stacked stone sometimes the stones were taken later on by other people that move into this area and sometimes it just caved in so you know they might still be in there they're just under soil which is probably the case I can actually see a couple stones over there so somewhere around here there's also what's left of a reservoir where they would have you know and cut in the ice and also the ice house where they've been storing it so we're gonna take out the metal detector see what we can find around the home and then go looking for those other things awesome spot all right well since the landowner said that they used this clearing for hunting there's a tree stand over on the edge I was completely expecting to find a ton of lead and shotgun shells and shell casings and that sort of thing so very surprised that my very first target here is not one of those things in fact it was very shallow and it winds up being an old underwear button and check it out they're still thread in it and there is writing around the outside let's see if we can get get that identified all right it says warranted not to cut not entirely sure what that means but we do often see buttons that say warranted from the 1800s we lost our string here cleaning it off that's okay cool first probably 100 year old hundred fifty year old button unbuttoned looking promising let's keep going so it's becoming more and more apparent that this operation up here was in existence the way up until you know probably even the early 1900s because I'm finding a lot a lot of sheet metal and it all comes off as pretty nice targets and I'm spending a lot of time digging them you know as America started kind of getting rolling the Industrial Revolution kicked in people kind of swapped over from being pioneers who hung on to the things that they found valuable to a little bit more of a throwaway society where you're gonna find stuff like this cans stuff that was just kind of strewn about we're gonna do the best we can we've been here a while already we did find a few buttons but that's about it and a lot of this stuff we're gonna spend some more time across their fingers here all right we just found something I've found in the past check it out this is really heavy I'm pretty sure it's a finial at the top of something bedpost really I mean anything flagpole just to uh add some decoration geez they must've been doing pretty good up here they've got beautiful stuff like this that's a heavy piece of brass that it was hard to miss with the metal detector see if I can find a few more things all right well if you know despite all of that she metal I am having a hard time finding nice clean mid-tones high tones so I'm digging iron and it just paid off big-time ah look at this thing and we know what that is it's huge look at that that is incredible big iron key could this have gone to the front door could this have gone to a giant padlock locking up their ice could this you know it could have gone 200 things but I like to think it went to the front door that is awesome I love finding these old keys they're so personal you know somebody would have been carrying this with them everywhere used it to protect what they cared about an old ing [Music] so maybe you can see behind me there's a bit of a clearing sunny spot that's where the cellar hole is the main cellar and I saw another clearing down here so I walked down and this must be where the reservoir was it's kind of a big bowl shape the bank is right there so I would be underwater over my head here in the middle of this kind of swampy area there's a little stream they would have dammed it up filled up full of water wintertime water froze cut out the ice block stored them away for the summertime and then sold them to the folks downtown pretty cool let me show you what it looks like here so you know you can clearly see this is kind of a swampy area you've got some cattails out there and you see this a lot you know behind beaver dams which I've broken this was underwater and all of the trees died that were here or cut down I suppose and then once the dam is gone it becomes a kind of a little pasture a little meadow and the trees are slowly making their way in it's pretty cool so we're gonna spend a little bit of time metal detecting down here this would have been underwater for a period of time that they were here and there would have been sediment and stuff kind of settling on top of whatever they may have dropped so we'll just do a quick spin and then we'll go up on the what would have been the bank and spend more time there see we can find a few things [Music] [Music] okay so I'm over here on the edge of the reservoir yeah what used to be a reservoir I got a pretty deep target dug it out check this out you see that we've got a thimble and it's a special kind of thimble you see this the top is gone I believe this is what's called a tailor's thimble it allows you to have the tip of your finger through and gives you a little bit more dexterity it's very small so I would suspect I mean I guess it could be a small man but I'm not the biggest guy in the world so I assume this is probably a woman's size and she must have been out here sitting out looking over their little pond mending some clothes really interesting see what else we can find I think the bugs are worse down here I got a pretty good target and I chased it around for a long time because it's so absolutely small and delicate but it's just a little piece of brass in the shape of a ring it probably fit my pinkie I'm not so sure that this is a piece of jewelry it could be anything you know it is brass so it's a soft metal it could have been used as a gasket or washer or really anything but because it's in pretty close proximity to that thimble I'm gonna I'm gonna very hesitantly say that it may be it's a piece of jewelry it since it is brass it would have been polished and and shiny and golden color really cool all right very nice all right well I just got another glutton tone and I thought I was going to be adding to my already very large collection of buttons today and I did but this one this one is different I rubbed it with my finger you see that that's an eagle with a shield it is pretty crushed unfortunately you know people would have been walking around horses oxen and all that and it would have been stepped on so we've got the Union shield in the middle there's no a or I for infantry or artillery so this may just be a general service it looks like the back is still on there so if I can get a back mark off that maybe we can get a date on it but you know if these folks are up in here mid 1800s late 18-hundreds very good chances of Civil War awesome well that's the find of the day so far military button pretty beat-up but a piece of history for sure alright well now that I've been doing a couple loops around this property really the only other pile of debris rubble you know stones and stuff is right here which I'm gonna have to guess is the Icehouse I suppose the Icehouse could have been completely wood with no foundation just sitting on the ground but probably not probably had a foundation I think this is it so here you can see pile of stones stacked maybe two or three high and it's not really in the shape of a square it might have been built up on pillars perhaps maybe you get some airflow under the building but this is my guess as being the Icehouse they would have just packed it full of sawdust in the summertime to keep it from melting and it would last probably all summer although winters lasts quite a quite a bit longer up here so summers not incredibly long I've hourly found a road that kind of goes down to the reservoir but they would have been dragging it up by horses or oxen and storing it here and then bring it on out of here for for sale man I can't think of a profession more gone by just doesn't exist anymore now that we have refrigerators incredible all right let's do some metal checking around here [Music] [Music] all right I'm over here next to the suspected ice house I just got a mid-tone target check this out look at that it's just a little fragment of a beautiful kind of Stoeger Bell from what I understand these were used for all sorts of things but I've seen them a lot on this piece of wood with a bunch of these attached to it and it would all move together and all ring and there's no way to know for sure I'm gonna suspect this was on the wagon I was pulling the ice out very very cool all right what else we can find well I've got a little bit of a mystery item here notice this really big tree tipped over with it I brought something almost to the surface right down here there's a hard rock here a bunch of roots and this target which was very shallow I've already cleaned it off and looked at it a little bit what do you think about that I mean it's clearly broken I suspect it was a full circle at one time it's very heavy I don't think it's led it's not soft enough to be led I first I thought maybe it was a piece of a lamp but they're not usually this heavy not entirely sure let me know what you think it's pretty cool whatever it is so keep going all right well I just found something that's kind of a common find but I'm excited about this one in particular because there's a brand name on it there's a good chance that this was a more recent drop by the landowner or the family we're gonna be able to find out for sure based on that name let me get it cleaned up a bit all right well I think we got it one side is better than the other from left to right we have h o l Ellie why Holly M a and you F which I assume is short for a manufacturing probably late 1800s maybe early 1900s all brass construction you never see this because they're almost always wood or bone scales and the name is long gone all right hey you know what it's been a good long day the deerflies are getting worse so I'm gonna pack up see what we found today and get out of here [Music] all right throwing in the towel these flies are eating me alive about what an incredible place this is we didn't find anything super valuable you know no coins or anything but that's somewhat to be expected by the altitude and you know the profession probably didn't have a ton of money to drop in the first place but some of the things that we found are just so personal to the people that lived here there's some of my favorite things to find for sure let's take a look all right check it out we absolutely killed it with buttons today 14 of them they're mostly all just kind of the same mid-1800s and later the Eagle button which I believe his general service probably Civil War era but you have to keep in mind that there was virtually no Civil War activity up this far into Vermont so this was more than likely dropped by a veteran who came home from the war right behind that we have our beautiful big iron key which is gonna get a prominent place in my collection of other keys it's probably the biggest one I have that's awesome the pocketknife which I'm very excited about going out and doing some research on that in the way back we have our broken piece of bail our finial kind of mystery circle heavy brass thing looking forward to hearing what you guys think and some spoon fragments so today was an exciting day you know a little bit slow metal detecting wise but just the place the incredible story that moose I wish I got it on camera I don't know if I did or not but just walking up on something that big in the forest when you're not expecting it still recuperating a little bit my heart was beating you know the things we found today it's a very typical day out here in the woods you're not gonna find incredible things every time you go out but the things we found combined with the story I think is pretty incredible so I'm gonna start hiking out of here thanks again for watching and hopefully [Music] [Music]

Channel: Green Mountain Metal Detecting

Views: 110,365

Keywords: adventure, Vermont, best metal detecting finds, metal detecting finds, metal detector, metal detecting coins, metal detecting videos, treasure hunting, metal detecting shovel, metal detecting tips, metal detecting, treasure, old coins, cellar hole, history, incredible, amazing, gmmd, stone walls, mystery, ghost town, 2019, New England

Id: xUlCKbNVFBk

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019