What artifacts have you found?

Evo's post got me interested. I am always on the lookout but unfortunately have no eye for it so I never find chit.

So what have you found while out fishing/hunting.

I have never found any ancient artifacts, I did find a cool fossil above 112 on the Lyre river in 1996 fishing for summer runs. a piece of basalt with a set of "housecat" sized vertebra going through it.

Close family friend and teaching partner of my Dad’s is a well known anthropologist in the PNW. He was a large part of the Ozette dig, responsible for the Hoko dig and ran the dig at Ralph Monroe’s property in Olympia to name a few. I’ve been fortunate enough to be around for several excavations of ancient basketry and cedar fishing nets at Mr. Monroe’s and at Hoko. One time at Hoko I was walking the bank fishing for cutts, we found a Makah basket sticking out of a clay bank. He removed it and preserved it. One of many many artifacts he’s pulled from old Native American settlements around the PNW.

My dad has developed quite the collection of PNW Native American baskets and other artifacts. He owns some property very near Ralph Monroe’s place and has found some very cool stuff including well worn stone tools similar to mortar and pestle as well as stone cutting tools.

I’ve toured the storage facility for the Makah tribal museum in Neah Bay several times. There is a lot of totally cool stuff in there that never gets displayed!

Lots of palm leaves and other plants along Chuckanut Drive. Back in the day when I drove heavy machinery building homes we would dig up seashell fossils all over the place, they are surprisingly ubiquitous if you get down more than a few feet into some clay.

Fish on...

Todd

I’m curious to hear what kind of artifacts you can find while fishing the Puyallup River at the trailer park access point.

Where's Vhawk when you need him?

He used to find the coolest "artifacts" every time he was out on the river!

Found some fossil leaves along various roadcuts near Leavenworth, some fossil branchiopods on the Grays River (my favorite find), and a few arrowhead chips in the Sierras. Also found the remains of an Indian fish trap near where a new concrete trap was being built.

Not a true artifact in comparison to the above, but back in the '80's on a hike way up Lake Chelan I came across part of the old CCC trail built during the depression. On it I found an old metal coffee cup that probably fell off a worker's backpack. The cup was there for 50+ years. Pretty cool to think about how those guys made that trail so long ago.

I found an artifact in Woodinville a couple years back. He was sitting in a chair speaking voice commands to his cell phone.

LOL

Fish on...

Todd

If you walk around The Reach above the Vernita Bridge you can find rocks that were used for net weights. Hot afternoons when they have the turbines humming and the river gets low is best.

when im fishing, im fishing, im not looking around for things... i focus on the task at hand...

my grandfather used to be into that stuff alot, at the cabin we had several extremely old arrow heads in very good condition... we also had another one that was a metal traingular blade, that was attached to some sort of bone, that had a hole in it to attach to a spear or something... and some very nice fossils of invertebrates, and other shelled creatures from a very long time ago....

my buddy Jim, (you know Jake, that 6'12 behemoth you were trying to make fun of on Facebook?) has a bow, quiver, and arrows from a few hundred years ago... not sure what tribe they are from, but its one of the coolest things you will ever see... i tried to buy it from him, but no dice....

if i end up with old stuff, i usually bought it... trade sometimes.. found an old indian head carved piece of wood on the beach at the cabin one day when i was really young, looked like it may have been a pipe at one point, or part of one... not sure what happened to that...

i have a page from the Koran from the 1400s, but i bought it, didnt find it on the Puyallup...

Not sure who said this but what a waste of a day on the river. Sounds like somebody that doesn’t actually spend much time fishing.

Stop being an idiot Jake...

Anyways I'm there to fish, if I want to go hunt for things, I go do that...





I'm there to fish....

Isn't 6'12 more commonly known as 7 feet?

Those in the 98th percentile just see things differently.

He's 6' 10"... But I guess people not in the 98th percentile can't figure out when someone is telling a joke or not...

The most fun about river fishing is exploring and trying to find some cool stuff. Catching fish is a bonus, I guess that's why I despise lake fishing in a boat. I have a lot of family that own ranches in kittitas county about 20 miles east of Ellensburg. My Parents grew up there and would go out and look for Ellensburg blue agates. That is the only place on earth where they exist. They are a Robbins eggs blue in color. My Folks found some nice size ones that are gem quality. They had two of the bigger ones that they had cut into heart shapes.

The best time to find them is in the early morning after a little bit of rain, once the sun comes up you look for little sparkles in the distance and there's a chance of finding some. I spent most summers bucking bales and help irrigating the crops. They had two nice ponds that were stuffed with trout....good old days.

Fossil hole on the bogachiel, You could fill a river boat with fossils of old sea life.

Back in the early 80's I found a 10 dollar bill in the Toutle River. Haven't seen one since.

fp

My brother recently found dinosaur bones on land I have in Wyoming my Grandpa homesteaded. Up high on a butte in the red-rock cliffs. Took them to a natural museum to have them verified - they wanted to come and do a dig - no dice.

I found some beach glass

D.B Cooper ? :>)

Nah, DB had 20s. Friend of mine who SCUBA's describes himself as "A little old lady diver". Stop and look at everything. Same with me with hunting or fishing. Gotta look, watch, see.

My favorite fishing is, I guess, fishing for feeding fish so it is often walk and wade or cast around cover. Always looking for clues. Since I worked at fish research, a lot of time was spent watching them (spawn, feed, swim upstream, whatever). So, it's the detail. Which is why searching the ground for agates, arrowheads, fossils is just part of it.

When I look, I find stuff and some of it is "neat". Heck, there are old Indian villages along some of our streams that you can find if you know what to look for.

I'm with the folks who doing more than "just fishing".

There are tons roadside rock & fossil shops all over CO, NE, WY, UT etc and growing up I used to hunt & collect for both a fair amount (also collected seashells). I had probably 5 or 6 large boxes full of stuff and I can't remember what happened to it all...

Some of things I've personally found over the years...
An Arapaho or Cheyenne arrowhead at pretty high elevation; a couple of ancient campfire sites; a shard of pottery; a ton of various plant fossils; a really large clam fossil that I left in place; a late 1800's Laudanum bottle in trolling Shilshole.

I also found a great piece of Obsidian buried deep during some excavation work in my current yard. It's all mixed glacial till where I'm at, so either a glacier brought it here, an ancient native dropped it here or it blew outta the top of a distant volcano. All I know is it shouldn't be found here.

This thread reminds me that my grandfather was a geologist for the state of Washington in the 80’s. In fact he was working when the mountain blew it’s top and he got to go up on the mountain almost immediately. I inherited several boxes of fossils, mostly plant and shell fossils, petrified wood, a large collection of rock and mineral samples and rock core samples from around the state. I might have to find those boxes and take a look. I used them for a school project about 15 years ago and haven’t seen them since.

my grandfather was investigated by the FBI in the 70s because they thought he was DB Cooper....

JTFC

Once long ago I saw something most here will never see.

A WDFW employee out of his truck.

A few arrowheads from northern Cal and some indian hieroglyphics in a river canyon is it for me.

Found some more modern stuff like old whiskey bottles that washed out of the old landfill in Tokeland.
Some Japanese glass balls covered in growth that looked like they'd been in the ocean for years.
Metal detecting, found some old war metals, silver watches and coins and a number of older gold rings.
This was all back in the 60's and early 70's. Fun to find but not artifacts worthy....
SF

My Father is a retired H.S Earth science Teacher. He always had his rock hammer under his car seat. I remember a spot near Lake Fenwick where he see's some sand stone along the road. We started cracking this sand stone apart which were garnets the size of small marbles, most were the size of pea's. They looked like they were already cut and polished.

I wish I remembered what happened to them.

I found a bunch of Oly stubby bottles and an issue of Hustler from 1986.

I do a fair amount of rock hounding where I live. Last year I hauled a 150 pound boulder of jasper out of a creeped. Big time score. Other rocks I've scored are jade,cinnabar,agate and quartz

looks like a super old Peavey, SS.....

That is a 17th century abortion tool.