Metal Detecting Research - Tips On Footwork
Here are some tips on footwork research during the warm months of the year. This activity can be done either after you have done your research and need to locate an actual site, or when you lack any leads and just assume that there might be something potential in the area. The footwork during the winter is another effective type of research which is described in my article "Exploring White Spots In the Winter."
Roadways
Always pay attention to dirt roads, trails, side pathways and dead ends (not always so). It's understood that if there is a road, it leads somewhere, or used to lead somewhere. It wasn't built for nothing. Abandoned roads in the forested areas are what you need to focus on. Being not bothered by a large amount of junk targets, some metal detectorists search only such roads and recover a handful of old coins.
By the way, in early America, the wide road infrastructure was not developed until the mid-1800s, and the roads weren't the major way of freight transportation even then. Today, when you send anything across country you refer to it as "shipping." This stems from the time when freight sent across-country went only by ship or canal boat. The canals took even some of the tourist business.
For example, even as late as 1860 many roads in New England were only clearings through forest, with few level stretches and often with stumps left in the middle of the road. In that year, the governor of Connecticut wrote, "...This kind of road will throw a child out of its mother's arms. We let our road-makers shake us enough to the mile to furnish assault and battery cases for a thousand police cases." That tells you one good thing: coins certainly dropped out of the travelers' pockets during the rides on those roads.
As the early roads were no more than rivers of mud, road-makers experimented and used different materials, from crushed coal to corncobs, to overcome that problem. There are still crushed-oyster-shell roads along the seacoast, left over from the time before the development of plank roads. First plank highway was built in Canada in 1836. In 1875, there were close to three thousand miles of plank roads in New York alone, and by 1880 the idea had spread to every other state.
The word "highway" came from old Europe, where there was always a smooth private road for the King, with adjoining lower shelf road for commoners. The word "turnpike" originated from the past when a pike turned or raised to admit travelers past the tollhouse. The custom of leading a horse from the left, and the convenience of having the teamster's seat also on the left side of the wagon, was why turnpike wagons traveled to the right of the road; because of that, Americans started driving on the right side of the road.
While exploring the abandoned roads, you should search:
1) Intersections
2) Openings in stone walls
3) Spots around creek crossings (possible "rest stops") and bridges, or
bridge remains
4) Side pathways
5) Openings in the forest
6) Earth mounds and depressions on the roadsides
7) Single-standing or first-growth trees, apple or other fruit trees on
the roadsides and in the forest
8) Unusual or alien vegetation and planting on the roadsides
This Trail Used to Be a Busy Road in Upstate New York
Deer Trails
It's important to add that the deer trails are sometimes the most helpful clues to locating a remote homestead site in the woods. Surprisingly, after 200 years since the homestead was abandoned and disappeared, the deer would still come to the site to snack on fruits and other edible vegetation.
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