I was on Fifth street on the night of the first day of construction. As reported in the Shopper, the curbs were gone but the street remained intact. I detected the area where the sidewalk was to be replaced. Switching on the backlight of the LCD, I could see the readings of the White's XLT, a feature that enabled me to detect after work at 11:00 P.M. Getting a signal that read in the nickel range, I scraped the loose soil and was rewarded with the end of a spoon ...not a great start, but a good indication that no one else had been there. I stayed for about 30 minutes, and although the spoon was the only target found, I was determined to hit the street again the following morning, when I could see where the excavated areas were located.

Arriving at the site, I was astonished to see a hole where I had been standing the night before--not just any hole, but a canyon, about 20 feet square and about 10 feet deep! Now this was construction. There was a huge pile of fresh soil from the pit in the middle of the street, and several workers inside the excavation were replacing some pipes. I patiently waited where three men were discussing the job.

I eased myself into their conversation by asking the obvious: "Would you mind if I ran my detector over your pile of dirt?" They said I would have to talk to the foreman, and they pointed in the direction of another worker inside the hole. I yelled down the same question about detecting and got the OK, then literally ran back to the truck to get my gear. "This is going to be great," I thought. I'm the first one to search this site in over a 100 years.

I started scanning the pile and waited for the first signal. Then I ran the coil over the pile and still waited for the first signal. There were no signals. All I could find was a couple of rusted nails--no coins, nothing brass, copper, silver, or gold. Only clicks were coming from my earphones. Then I realized that the dirt that I was searching was from the bottom of the hole, the topsoil was buried under tons of dirt from 10 feet down. I thought that I was out of luck for the first day and would have to come back another time when they were ripping up the street to find the good stuff.

The curbs were gone, so I decided to detect the small areas uncovered by their removal. I had just started when I got a good signal and, looking down at the coil, saw a coin right on top of a small clump of dirt. I picked it up and saw the headband feathers of an Indian Head cent. This was a good start, and I thought that I was in for a fantastic day. Unfortunately, it was the only coin I found throughout the block. I had just gotten to the end of the block when I spotted another guy detecting on the other side of the street. I stopped, and we had a short conversation about the coin I had found and exchanged names. Al Mueller and I became familiar figures on the street after that. Al even got to know the equipment operators who appreciated the stories that he and I would later tell about our finds.

That first coin was an 1865 Indian Head, and I was looking forward to many more good coin recoveries. I returned on Saturday and discovered that I had the street all to myself. The blacktop was entirely gone now and I thought that I could find more coins. I dug a few pieces of brass and a shotgun shell casing, but no coins for the entire length of the block. I detected to where there was a large pipe lying along the side of the street. I moved the coil next to it and received an "overload" signal and had to move away.

One hit near the pipe was different somehow, and I tried to pinpoint the target, Trying a different approach,but the detector just locked on to the pipe. I carefully ran the coil parallel to the pipe with the pinpoint trigger on and was able to lock onto a specific spot that gave a stronger signal. After just kicking some loose soil, I noticed a coin. It was a 1900 Barber dime. This was enough to make the day seem worth the effort. The coin was heavily corroded, but the details were still sharp.

Two coins in three attempts at Fifth Street was a rather discouraging average, but I just had to keep trying. The next time I went, I met up with Al again, and we discussed how we would share the newly exposed street from the next block of construction. It was agreed that we would each have half of the street, and we would follow the equipment exposing the bare ground. We were extremely careful not to interrupt the crew and made every effort to stay well behind their work.

Surprisingly, we found hardly any coins found in the street. Most of the coins were recovered in the boulevards that were partially dug up as a result of the curb removal. Nevertheless, I remained stubbornly in the street, while Al went to the grassy sections. I got a good signal, picked up a Lincoln Memorial cent, and realized that it had come from the boulevard where it dropped from the earth moving equipment. However, the next signal was a badly corroded 1897 Indian Head cent, and I went over to brag to Al, who was recovering Wheat cents and other good stuff from the grass.

Leaving for the day, I said fairwell to Al, and we exchanged e-mail addresses and business cards. Two days later an e-mail from Al had several photos of some finds he made. One in particular caught my attention.

It was a baggage tag with the words "STEAMER KEOKUK" with the maker's mark clearly visible: "Thos George & Co. Chicago". I have a book titled "Upper Mississippi River History" by Captain Ron Larson that just happens to have a photo of the steamer Keokuk courtesy of the Winona County Historical Society. I believe I was more excited about the discovery than Al was. He had also recovered a Civil War token with the date 1863 near where the tag was recovered. These items were found just after the curbs had been removed from another block of the street where construction had begun.

I returned on another day and started searching the street again. After a few minutes of nothing but trashy signals, I stepped up to the grassy boulevard and was rewarded with a 1920-D Mercury dime. As I continued working in the grass, finding a few newer coins, near the end of the block I saw Al working his way toward me. As we chatted and compared finds, he told be that he had also found a gold ring the previous day.

We each resumed our patterns, and a few minutes later I found something that I just had to share with Al. It was a slightly bent badge with the letters R.O.A. and the date 1936. Upon closer inspection, we saw the numbers 1 through 26 also stamped into the face, and on the attached piece were all the letters of the alphabet. It was a Radio Orphan Annie decoder pin. The small rivet that held the pieces together had rusted out, but I've since had another one made. I also straightened the pin out by heating the metal with a small propane torch and carefully reshaping the metal. Without using this method, there is a risk of the brittle metal cracking or breaking.

I also found a 1920 Buffalo nickel and several Wheat pennies. Al and I made our best recoveries on the boulevards, but the construction is what enabled us to find some of the deeper targets located there. I told Al one day that I believed that the property owners wouldn't have cared if we had used shovels, since the earth was already disturbed anyway. By the way, we both had received permission from the city to detect the boulevards before we started. I personally will not detect anywhere without permission. The streets are still torn up, and as of this writing we still have some time to find more history.