Searching Old Camp Floyd

First of all don't confuse Old Camp Floyd with the Camp Floyd in Fairfield.  Old Camp Floyd was a camp site for Johnston's army where they camped for 2 months in the summer of 1858.  This camp is located on what is now private land, and I had the chance to hunt it with Duane Bylund, who talked with the land owner and got permission.  Duane is someone who knows a lot about Old Camp Floyd. He even wrote a book about it called "In Search of Johnston's Army."  You can check out his web site and see pictures of some of the stuff he found by clicking here.

Duane kept warning me that the area had been hunted out and about the only thing I could expect to find was some square nails.  I didn't care, finding square nails on historic ground would be good enough for me.

We spent most of our time hunting through a small section of cedar trees.  It was just like he said, there was nothing to be found but old square nails, but the cool thing was that these nails had been dropped over 150 years ago by Johnston's army.

Duane told me that back in the 90's when this area was being hunted hard with metal detectors, that the most common coin found in the area was the $1 gold pieces.  Each time I would get a non-ferrous (non iron) signal, I could imagine finding a gold coin.  A couple of the signals turn out to be modern lead bullets, a 20 gauge shotgun shell, and a 30-30 cartridge. The one non-ferrous signal that I believe came from Johnston's army was a little flat piece of lead that was less than a square inch with a small hole in the middle.

I also found an old piece of glass.  My best find of the night was an iron thimble.  The thimble was in rough shape, missing the tip.  Normally, I would chuck all this as junk, but to know that it has been here since 1858 makes it pretty cool.  Duane found a small pewter button (no picture).

Square Nails from Johnston's Army