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Hunts thrill hunters, irritate historians

Big fee-paid relic hunts are a relatively new--and some say, troubling--development

Date published: 10/28/2006

By RUSTY DENNEN

Large, organized Civil War relic hunts are a relatively new phenomenon in Virginia.

The Grand National Relic Shootout at Crow's Nest, with about 150 metal-detector-toting participants, is the second in the area this year.

Last spring, about 200 relic hunters attended a three-day hunt in Culpeper County. That was sponsored by another group, Diggin' in Virginia.

Jack Edlund, a relic hunter and owner of Salvage Archaeology in Fredericksburg, said the large, fee-based hunts are fairly similar in how they operate.

"You get a bunch of guys who all pay whatever to rent some farmer's field for a weekend. They start in the morning, dig until 5 and then everybody stops for the day," he said yesterday.

Though most privately owned area sites have been picked over for years, there's plenty left to find. Union soldiers encamped in Stafford, for example, left behind bullets, uniform buttons and belt buckles, stirrups, pieces of bayonets, rifles, dinnerware, remnants of canteens and the like.

Burt Alderson of Tennessee, a judge for the Grand National Relic Shootout, said yesterday that most participants keep their finds.

"Some of these people come from all over the country," he said. "If they find one thing, they're in love."

Though many relic hunters carefully document what they've found, and where, for posterity, some are in it for the money.

Rare belt buckles sell for thousands of dollars on eBay. Almost any Civil War artifact--from bullets to brass scabbard and knapsack components, are sought by collectors.

Crow's Nest, purchased by K&M Properties Inc. in the late 1980s, had a role in American Indian, Colonial and Civil War history.

But Alderson said hunters didn't find much during yesterday's outing. That's probably because people with metal detectors have scoured the land since the 1950s.

The Patawomeck tribe settled at Indian Point, across Accokeek Creek from Crow's Nest. Col. Gerard Fowke was the first recorded owner of the property in the early 17th century.

A plantation house on Crow's Nest was confiscated by the Union Army in 1862 to serve as a lookout over the two creeks and the Potomac River, and the house and outbuildings were reportedly burned. Local historians say there were at least five Union camps on the property.

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Date published: 10/28/2006