The Dundee Dig

During September of 1995 I was assigned to a jobsite (Fermi nuclear power plant) just south of Detroit, near Monroe, Michigan. Being in new territory (for me), naturally I was anxious to explore coin hunting opportunities. After work each day, I would methodically locate and hunt old, rural church and one room school sites where I could get permission. As I had expected, the vast majority of them were hunted clean as a whistle. That's a frustrating fact of contemporary coin hunting and only an undying love for the hobby and old coins will fuel the determination necessary for success. I did find one old church with an adjoining parsonage and private school building which was no longer in use that had a few coins left. (Sites like this keep away hunters who don't ask permission because the pastor lives right there.) I secured permission from the pastor and discovered that his wife had dug a nice Indian Head while puttering around in their garden. I spent the entire afternoon hunting the premises. It had obviously been hunted before, because there were few coins and they were all relatively deep. I did get two barber dimes (common dates, heavy wear) and several old wheaties, though.

I had just about checked all the rural church and many school sites in the county when I happened through the small town of Dundee on Tuesday, September 19th. As I approached the stoplight at the center of town, signs of construction were obvious. "I wonder," I thought. "I just wonder if maybe they're doing sidewalks!" Sure enough, they were. Dare I hope for a site that had been as good as Decatur was two years ago? I quickly circled the block to check the extent of the work. The town had an unusual layout, with a triangular park in the center of the business district. One side of the street already had new sidewalks poured. The other two sides still had dirt exposed where the old walks had been removed.

I wasted no time finding a parking spot and jumping out with my detector, a Minelab Sovereign. It wouldn't take long to determine how heavily it had been hit by local coin hunters. I started near the stoplight and worked my way west down the block long stretch. There were very few signals of any kind. I picked out a couple of pieces of trash, then got a loud signal about fifty feet from where I started. It was a well worn 1873 Seated Liberty dime practically on the surface. "Anyone would have hit that one," I thought. "Maybe it hasn't been hunted too hard yet, after all."

I continued down the block with no other good signals until I got in front of the last store on that side, then, presto! An 1883 dime. Again, it wasn't a tough signal and should have been picked up by any other thorough hunters. I was pleased with this start, though. Any coin hunter knows it's not every day you come up with a Seated Liberty dime. I then crossed the street to the short side of the triangle. There were only three stores over there, and I came up empty . By then darkness had lowered its velvet blackness about the landscape, so I headed for the embrace of a warm bed for a good nights rest..

Wednesday I made tracks for Dundee immediately after work. When I got there, the construction crew was still working. I went to the west end of the block where a bulldozer was grading an empty lot beside the last store. They had put a storm drain in the middle of the lot and the 'dozer was contouring the surface so water would run into the drain. There was a parking lot covering the rest of the block down to the next street and it was obvious they were going to expand it to include this lot and the storm drain. I began talking with one of the construction crew who was holding a shovel and watching the 'dozer.

"Sure," he said, "there's been other guys here with detectors. We heard one of them found a silver dollar. Have you found anything?"

Just my luck. Decatur didn't yield a silver dollar and I've still never found one. "I got a couple of silver dimes yesterday," I responded. "Are you guys going to do any more digging or grading and filling in the sidewalk areas?" 

"No," he said." They just ran a cable trencher through there yesterday and buried a cable, but we're not doing anything more."

That explains the dimes, I thought. They were pulled up by the trencher. What a stroke of luck that they were dimes instead of pennies.

"There used to be a tavern on this lot," he said, indicating where the 'dozer was working. "You should try looking there."

The only other soil I could see that had been moved that day was along the edge of the street where they were getting ready to pour the new curb. Not much had been disturbed, and it didn't take long to cover it. I got one late Indian head and a V-nickel where the 'dozer had cut a gash in the sidewalk bank. That was it. The coins were in there, but they had to move dirt to expose them. Previous hunters had cleaned out the reachable ones. I knew I needed to try using a shovel to see if there was any undisturbed original soil underneath the gravel.

I went to an area just west of the spot where I found the first dime and started digging. I dug a stretch about 3 foot wide and four or five feet long and deep enough to be sure there wasn't any original soil there. I didn't get a single coin. I had obviously started in the wrong spot. Moving to an area about 40 or 50 feet further west, I dug another large hole. While I was digging a nice looking woman yelled at me from across the street at the short end of the triangle.

"Do you really think you should be digging out there?" She asked.

???? Unbelievable. Here I am, in the middle of a sea of dirt and gravel exposed by heavy machinery, and someone thinks I might hurt something by doing a little digging with a shovel. The guys on the construction crews have shovels in their hands every day, but because it's after quitting time someone figured out I'm not with the crew. "What can I possibly hurt?" I queried. "They're digging in here with machines."

"Yes, but they're all done in that area with the machines and you probably shouldn't disturb it. They buried a cable in there yesterday and you might hit it."

"I know. I can tell exactly where it is and I'm not digging there. I've already talked to the construction people and they don't have a problem with me doing this. Believe me, I know what I'm doing."

"Okaaaayyyyy......," she said and walked away.

I didn't really pay attention to where she went. My focus was on what I was doing. I dug a hole about the same size as the first one and got one Indian Head for my trouble. It wasn't an old one (meaning pre 1900) and the soil content again had very little black dirt in it. There were old brick fragments and a little topsoil mixed in with the gravel, but nothing like what I was looking for, so I concluded that digging at this site wasn't going to be very productive. I filled the hole, called it quits, and began the two and a half hour drive home for the weekend.

I returned Monday to see if the situation had changed any. It hadn't, so I began working the stretch by the parking lot again, hoping I might get a coin I had missed last time. I hadn't been there for five minutes when a sheriff's patrol car drove into the parking lot, pulling up right across the guard rail from me. I was digging a signal with my trowel when he came across the guardrail.

"Are you the guy who was out here digging with a shovel?" he asked.

"Yes??" I replied.

"Well, you can't do that. What you're doing now is OK. That's what all the other guys who were here were doing, but you can't use a shovel."

"Why not?" I asked. "I have an OK from the construction foreman and I'm working with them, not getting in their way."

"That doesn't matter. One of the merchants complained about what you were doing, so you can't do it anymore. I don't want to see you back here using a shovel again without getting permission first."

He took my name and actually filled out a report. It must have been some kind of procedure to document what he had done, I guess. He left and I finished going over that stretch again, getting only a couple more wheaties. A guy who lived in a neighboring town showed up with a detector just after the cop left. He asked if I was doing any good and told me he had gotten 40 or 50 coins out of the same stretch where I was working. The only silver he got was a couple of worn out Barber dimes like mine and he said he didn't get any 'old' Indian heads but had gotten a few later ones. When I told him I had gotten as many coins out of that stretch as he had, he looked kind of dejected because he knew I had cleaned them out. I went to the place they were dumping the dirt they hauled out and let him hunt there. I knew he wouldn't find anything, 'cause I had been over it three times and only got a couple of wheaties the last time. He didn't stay very long, and I never saw him again.

Finally, on Wednesday the 4th, I decided I wasn't going to get anything more unless I dug again. When I got to Dundee, I went to the stores on the short side of the triangle to find the lady who had questioned my digging before, who I thought was the one who must have complained to the sheriff's department. Only one of the three stores was really open for business, and I started there. A lady in the store said it wasn't anyone there and she didn't know who it could be. When I told her the cop said I had to get permission from the town, she suggested I try asking at the town hall. When I walked in, there was the lady I was looking for sitting behind a desk.

"You're the one who was questioning me about digging the other day, aren't you?" I asked.

"Yes?" she replied.

"Well, a cop told me I couldn't do it anymore if it was going to upset people. I don't want to upset anyone. I just need to understand why anyone would be upset by my digging in that sea of mud (it had been raining of and on all week) as long as I fill my holes back up. The construction crews know what I am doing, and they said it was OK with them. Why do you object to what I'm doing?"

"I don't have a problem with it," she said. "If they don't care, I don't either."

Good. Now I could go ahead and dig again. I still didn't realize that it wasn't really her that had complained, but at this point I thought I had made peace with the opposition. Getting my shovel, I started digging near the last hole I had dug a week earlier. At least I had gotten one coin there. Maybe I could get a couple more. Within a few minutes I had moved the gravel off a four foot by three foot area and was beginning to see signs of old topsoil. Bits of clay pipe started appearing and I knew I was in the right stuff. After leveling the area with the shovel, I began scanning it with the detector. I got a good solid hit and stuck the shovel in to pop it out. Directly underneath the shoulder bone of some long past meal, an 1873 seated quarter came to light. It grades about F-12 and is the fourth seated quarter I've ever found. This proved beyond a shadow of a doubt once again the value of digging. I had gone directly over that spot a number of times and hadn't even gotten a whisper from the quarter, which had been about twelve inches below the surface. Had the ground been all good topsoil the Sovereign might have picked it up at 12 inches, but there was a lot of gravel over it. I had no more than slipped it into my pocket when a sheriff's patrol car pulled up beside me. 

Rolling down the window, the officer shouted at me.

"Hey!" he yelled. "I told you not to come back in here with a shovel!"

My heart dropped like a cannon ball to the pit of my stomach. "I know," I began. "But...." He quickly pulled the car onto the shoulder, got out and crossed the street before I could finish. It was the same officer who had talked to me before. Just my luck. He was not happy about my digging again after he had told me not to. Clearly upset, he lambasted me so rapidly I didn't get a chance to get a word in edgewise for a couple of minutes.

"Look at the size of that hole!" he exclaimed. "That could be dangerous. What if someone falls in there and gets hurt? You and the town could get sued. I want you to fill that hole up and get out of there NOW!" The hole was large in area but only about a foot deep. I opened my mouth to speak and he started again before I could get a word out. "I can't believe you came back and did this again after I told you not to. If you don't quit, I'm going to have to arrest you!"

"OK, OK," I said, finally getting in a word. "I'm not trying to argue with you. I'll do what you say. Just let me ask a couple of questions!" He finally settled down enough to listen. "How can anyone fall in a hole I'm standing in? I don't make them any bigger than this before I fill in behind me. I make sure there is no danger. I talked to the lady over at the town hall who questioned me before about digging. She said she didn't have a problem with it as long as it was OK with everyone else. Do you have a problem with it yourself?"

"No," he said. "But it's not me. One of the merchants called the office and complained about a guy digging again. If they don't want you doing it, you can't. If they call us, we have to do something."

"Well, I don't want to aggravate anyone, especially you. You said before I had to get permission. I thought I had. If I talk to the merchant who called you and come to an agreement, is it OK with you?"

"That's not good enough. You have to get permission from the town authorities. Don't let me see you doing this again unless you have written and signed permission. Now, fill up that hole and get out of here!"

I battled desperately with despair as I filled the hole. When I finished I went back across the street to the town hall. The lady I talked to before was still there. I told her what had happened, then I showed her the quarter. She was quite interested, as people always are by coins that old, especially when you are talking about finding them. "There's a lot of neat stuff out there," I told her. "If I can get a chance to get to it, I'll make a donation to the town like I did in Decatur." I explained what had happened there (see my 27 Days Digging Decatur). "Can you help me get the written permission I need? Who do I talk to?"

"The man in charge of the construction project is the head of the town council. He's at a meeting in Detroit and won't be back until Monday."

"Well, what about the Mayor?" I queried. "Couldn't he do it?"

"I guess you could talk to him and see what he says. Let me see if he's in his office." She called his office but no one was there. "He must have left for the day already."

"How can I get hold of him? I need to get permission right away or it will be too late. At the rate they are going, the walks will be poured in a couple of days." She was kind enough to give me both the beeper number for the councilman on the chance that I could catch him in Detroit and the home phone number of the Mayor. I went to where I was staying and waited until about 6:30 or 7 o'clock to make sure the business day was over, then started placing calls. I wasn't able to get to the councilman, but I finally got the Mayor on the second try. I introduced myself over the phone and explained what the problem was.

"I'm looking for things with a metal detector downtown where they've dug up the street and sidewalks," I said, "and the cops told me I need to get an OK from you to do it."

"Why would they tell you that?" he asked. "There have been quite a few guys down there with detectors and they never asked me. It's not a problem."

"Well, someone complained to them about me digging."

"Someone complained about you digging in that mess? What on earth is their problem? Everything is all dug up anyway!"

"My sentiments exactly," I responded. "But I was doing a little more digging than the other guys were. I was using a shovel, but I had already talked to the construction crews and got their OK, and I always fill up my holes when I'm done. I can't get in touch with the councilman because he's away for the weekend, so I thought I'd ask you. If I'm as successful as I think I might be, I'll have some neat stuff I can donate to the town's historical society or museum, if you have one." We talked for nearly an hour. I explained the kind of things I would find and told him about the donation I made to Decatur, Michigan after their downtown renovation.

"I don't see a problem with that," he stated. "You can go ahead as far as I'm concerned."

"The officer said I had to get written and signed permission. Could you do that for me?"

"Sure. Just come to the town hall tomorrow after work and I'll have it waiting there for you."

"I really appreciate it," I told him and hung up.

The next day it rained steady all day and I drove to Dundee just to pick up the permission slip. True to his word, it was waiting there. The same lady I had talked with before gave it to me and wished me good luck.

I was there early Friday afternoon. I was determined that I wasn't going to upset anyone in spite of having written permission. I located the construction boss and showed him and a couple of other workers the seated coins. They were quite interested and had many questions. I answered them and made sure once again that I hadn't interfered with their work in any way. They had no problems with what I was doing and wished me further luck. I then proceeded to get permission from each one of the store owners where I wanted to dig. Things went smoothly with me explaining to each business person and getting permission until I got to the store where I had been digging when the officer ran me out the second time. An elderly lady came forward when the door bell rang. It turned out that she was the one who had called him.

"I don't appreciate you digging in front of my store," she said. "I have customers coming in."

That's funny. I couldn't remember a single person going in that store all week. Maybe she was hoping for a customer and wanted to be sure I wasn't in the way. "I was way out by the curb," I responded. "There was plenty of room for people to get by with no trouble."

"I don't care. I don't want you digging in front of my store while I'm open."

Aha! An opening. "What about after you close?"

"You can dig all night for all I care as long as you fill it up when you're done."

Great! "I appreciate that," I said. "I don't have a problem with waiting until you're closed." If she had just opened her door and said something to me instead of calling the police, none of this would ever have happened. I finished asking at the rest of the stores and started digging near the stoplight again, only next to the store this time. The results were the same as before, all sand and no coins. Apparently, in an attempt to level the side walk (that end of the street was higher than the other end), some soil had been removed from that end of the block. I was to confirm this later in the evening.

I moved down the block to the area where I had found the flying eagle, just past the last store. I wanted to stay clear of the businesses until after about six when they would all be closed. Having seen the bulldozer working in that area quite a lot while installing the storm drain, I wasn't sure whether it had graded the soil deep enough to remove the old stuff or not. The question was answered very quickly as I dug the first four foot by four foot area. At a depth of only 8 inches I hit the strata change. Scanning with the detector yielded about a dozen coins. I got one V nickel, three seated dimes and the rest were Indian heads. The dates were all eighties and nineties. As I was digging, a couple of guys with detectors approached from the parking lot.

"Are you doing any good?" one of them asked.

"A little," I said. I told them about the problems I had had and the written permission slip. "I doubt you'll find anything without digging the way I am. I've been over everything pretty well and It was cleaned up before I even found this place. Even if you had shovels with you, I wouldn't advise you to use them unless you got a permission note first like I did.:"

"Where did they take the dirt they dug out of here?" he queried. "I hunted a town where they did this and they stripped all the coins up and hauled them away. I hunted the dirt piles and got a ton of old coins out of them."

"It's over behind the stores up the block," I responded, indicating the area for him. "I tried hunting that but they have it all in one big pile right underneath a power line pole with a transformer on it. The interference is so bad you can't hunt it."

"There's coins in that dirt. We might as well give that a try."

"I know they are in there. Maybe your machine won't be as susceptible to the noise as mine. Good luck." I kept digging. A while later they were back and talked a little more.

"You were right about the interference," he said. "Where else could we look that might have a chance of turning something up?"

"Try across the street," I said, indicating the short stretch still open on that side. "I went over it already and didn't get anything, but there is some interference over there. I didn't cover it that well. I might have missed something."

"What about this area?" he said, indicating the lot where the bar had been.

"I went over most of that too," I told him. "There's a lot of chunks of molten metal in there that hit good. I doubt people were losing coins under the building, either.

The spokesman crossed over and his more inexperienced buddy stayed close to me around the new storm drain. A few minutes later we heard a shout from across the street. We could tell by the excitement that he had found something good. "It's a silver dollar," he yelled. "This is virgin territory over here!"

"What's the date on it?" I asked. He threw it across to his partner, who missed the catch because the throw was short. The coin landed on edge and bounced hard off the sidewalk going back to the parking lot. It surely must have put a good ding in the edge. It was an 1889 (I think) Morgan in nice shape.

"That's my third one," he shouted and went back to hunting.

Looking back on it, I want to remember that there may have been a very large signal over there that I passed over, assuming it to be surface junk, but I can't be sure. He didn't find anything else and his partner didn't find anything at all. It was getting dark and they were ready to leave.

"Well, this sure isn't anything like the other construction town I did," he said.

"It is if you use a shovel." I showed them the coins I had dug. They about had a fit when they saw I had gotten three seated dimes out of the small 4X4 area. "Hang on a minute. I have something in the car I want to give you." I went and got a copy of 27 Days Digging Decatur and gave it to him. They thanked me for my help and for the article and left. I believe he had said they were from Pontiac, Michigan.

I was working toward the west to meet the area where I had started. As I worked that way, I figured the old soil would have to get thicker as the sand got thinner and yield more coins. I should be getting both mid and late 1800's coins from this area. It was about 9 PM when the squad car pulled up.

"Oh, no. Not again!" I groaned.

An officer got out and came over to the edge of the road. "You're going to have to fill in that hole an leave," he said. "You've already been told a couple of times."

"I know," I replied, "But I have permission to do this. The other officer said if I got written permission, I could go ahead."

"You've got written permission? Where is it?"

"Yes. The Mayor left a signed note for me at the town hall yesterday. It's in my car."

"Well, you're going to have to leave anyway. You need to get permission from the man in charge of this project. He's the only one who can authorize you to do this."

He explained how he understood what I was doing. He was interested in history and artifacts himself, and told me of a couple of things he had researched and found. He was a lot less abrasive than the officer who had stopped me the first two times and would listen to what I had to say, but stuck to his guns nonetheless. I had no choice but to leave. "OK," I told him. "It will take a few minutes to fill this in, then I'll go." He left and I was thinking furiously. It took only a couple of minutes to fill the hole and I quickly loaded my gear and jumped in the van. The officer had driven toward the freeway, so I headed in that direction. There were several fast food joints, quick marts, and hotels there and I scanned all of them for the squad car. I spotted it rounding the corner of the Burger King. I pulled into the parking lot and flagged him down. He stopped and rolled down the window with a questioning look on his face.

"I just wanted to show you what the results of what I was doing can be," I explained. "If you're not too busy, take a couple of minutes and look at this." I handed him a color printout of the 27 Days Digging Decatur story. He paged through it looking at the photos and asking questions. I answered and explained as he went. He again expressed his interest in such things, but wasn't able to tell me I could go ahead. My ploy hadn't worked. I think someone else must have told him to make me leave.

I couldn't resist coming back on Monday, though, hoping they may have uncovered something else or that maybe I could finally talk to the right guy and get permission to dig. It was too late. Fresh sidewalk cement covered the areas I had been working Friday. The construction foreman was back on the bulldozer in the same area where I had first seen it. When he shut it off and jumped down, I approached him with the two cent piece from Friday night.

"It's not in very good shape," I said, "but it's still a neat souvenir. I probably could have gotten a better one for you if they had just let me work this area like I wanted to. I want you to have this as a token of my appreciation for your help." He thanked me and went back to work. I crossed the street to the last area that might still yield a coin or two and started scanning it with my machine. That's when I finally got a look at the town councilman running the show when he came down the street surveying the work and talking with his companion.. He was a relatively young, blond headed guy. One could tell just by watching his gestures and posture that he was a very self confident, authoritative individual. He had finally been in town while I was there, but it was too late to worry about approaching him now with the last good area covered with new cement.

I didn't find anything else and packed in my detector for the last time at that site. It's just too bad that things had happened the way they did. I had done my utmost to try and recover what I could before it was sealed away for the next several decades. All of the types of artifacts and coins that had been found in Decatur were there in Dundee as well. Had I just been given the freedom to recover it, Dundee could have had a nice donation for their historical archives as Decatur did. I learned a valuable lesson from this experience. No longer will I circumvent an individual who is doing something I have a problem with. I will always try to resolve it with them personally first. Having experienced it first hand, I know how it feels to be perfectly willing to compromise or co-operate with someone but not be given the chance. If that store owner had just come directly to me with her complaint instead of calling the police, this story could have had an entirely different outcome.