Treasure Hunting at Western Ghost Towns

If you want to have some fun and have an entertaining treasure hunt, try the Western Ghost Towns.

The ones I'm referring to are the ones you need a four wheel drive vehicle to get to them. The key to finding these ghost towns is "research". The first place most people start is buying a book on ghost towns in the area they are going to treasure hunt. It is best to have a topographical map of the area also. Another good source is the local historical society. They usually have old photographs of long gone ghost towns.

Let me say something about old black and white photographs. All the building depicted in the photograph appear further away than the actual distance at the ghost town site.

We were searching a long gone town in SE Arizona. We had to four wheel it for about 1-1/2 hours to get to it. We had the Typo map; an old picture of the town dated 1888. There were some visible adobe foundations at the site. We were looking for the old saloon site. Standing on a small rise we thought it was approximately 50 yards away. Fortunately there were other mounds of dirt and hills we good triangulate. We actually were almost standing on top of the saloon foundation.

Looking at the old picture we determined where the front door would have been. Most of the building would have had wooden walks, with separations between the boards. If some one dropped a coin on the walk, most likely it would drop through the floor. Since we didn't have a picture of what the saloon looked like inside we had to guess where the bar might have been.

Most of the buildings in these old ghost towns are not very big, so you can set up a string search pattern area to make sure you cover every inch. It was a lot of fun researching the site.

Our finds that day were over 50 100 year old square head nails, 3 "V" Nickels, one worth $35-$50. Older pennies, and a few quarters. We were hoping for a Gold coin, but maybe we will find it over the next hill. Happy treasure hunting.

Treasure Hunting items at; Treasures