Putting It All Together

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You just got a metal detector, where can you go hunt? You searched your own yard endlessly and are ready to strike out for richer pastures. There are more places to hunt than you think. All it takes is a little research and knowhow. First off, talk to family members. Ask questions, lots of questions. Where did they grow up, go to school, play, picnic, camp, swim? Where was the railway station? Next, go visit the local library.

Find the local history section and read, read and read. Take notes and photocopy maps. Start a folder or binder of possible sites by county. This way you can plan a days hunt. If one site doesn't pan out, you have a backup site to goto. Use a small pocket tape recorder to take notes in the field.

Which brings us to the topic of this web site: Finding Treasure Sites with the Internet. The nice thing about the Internet is that you can do your research anytime, at your convience.

Lets do a step by step search for possible sites using services on the Internet. If you follow these steps, you should have a number of possible sites.

As an example, I will look for churches in Clarion County Pennsylvania.

Lets start by using the GNIS Site Finder to locate possible sites.

To do a search we only need to fill in three fields in the GNIS search form: They are:

State: Select from Pull down menu. Example: Pennsylvania Feature Type: Select from Pull down menu. Example: church County Name: Enter county interested in. Example: clarion

After filling in these fields, press the "Send Query" button.

The GNIS database contains 30 churches for Clarion County. Wow, that's thirty possible sites to hunt. Note that the GNIS only returns active churches, abandoned or long gone churches will NOT be shown.

Features returned will be in the following format:

Saint Marks Church PA Clarion church 411626N 0793337W Kossuth

where:

Saint Marks Church Feature Name PA State Clarion County church Feature Type 411626N Longitude 0793337W Latitude Kossuth 7.5 minute topo map name

You can print this list to save for future reference.

Making a Topo map of our site

Now that we have a list of thirty churches, where are they? We could search a topo map, but there is a quicker way. To create a topo map of a site location goto TopoZone and click on the "Get a Map" button at the top left of the page. Here goto the "Search by Latitude and Longitude" section.

Enter the Latitude and Longitude for the selected site from the GNIS listing . For my example I will use the Latitude and Longitude for:

Saint Marks Church PA Clarion church 411626N 0793337W Kossuth

We will need to use the:

Latitude Degrees Minutes Seconds Longitude Degrees Minutes Seconds

Section of the TopoZone search page.

We need to break up the given Latitude and Longitude number into Degrees, Minutes and Seconds.

411626 breaks up into 41 degrees 16 minutes and 26 seconds. 0793337 breaks up into 79 degrees 33 minutes and 37 seconds.

Enter the latitude and longitude into the Degrees, Minutes & seconds fields.

Then press the "Map It" button. The topo map of our selected site will be displayed. The default map scale is 1:100,000. Click the 1:25,000 button at the top of the map to get more detail. Note that "St. Marks Ch" is near the center of the map. The default map size is "Small". Click the "Medium" button at the top right to get a larger map. You can now print the map for future reference. That's it! Just repeat the above steps for all the sites you are interested in. Click here for a Map Scale Reference

The next step is to try to find anything about Saint Marks Church online with a search engine. Click here to do a search.

What would be good search terms to use? "Saint Marks Church" is a good start. Enclose Saint Marks Church in quotes "" to search for these terms together. Add "pennsylvania" to limit our search to this state. Ok, let's try it. Press the "Go" button to start the search.

This returns two hits, none returning any good information. That's the way it goes, sometimes you can find a lot of useful information and sometimes nothing.

In conclusion, using the free services on the Internet can lead you to many possible metal detecting sites. By using the GNIS and TopoZone you can find hundreds of possible sites in your area. You will probably be limited only by your free time to search these sites. Remember to always get permission to search any site. Leave the area cleaner than you found it. Good Luck!

Tip: You can get a list of all features in the GNIS database for a county by doing the following: At the GNIS Form just select a "State" and enter a "County" and press the "Send Query" button. That's It! In my example County: "Clarion" and State "Pennsylvania" returned 450 features in the GNIS database for Clarion county. That's a lot of possible sites.

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