I've hunted some national forest land for years. Once about 12 years ago I walked up on a very old stone fireplace out in the middle of the woods - about 150 yards from a huge bluff. There was a stone foundation in front of the fireplace, making the cabin about 12' x 14' roughly. There was also another stone foundation off to the right, but no fireplace for it. I thought it would be really cool to come back there one day and do some metal detecting - provided I got permission.
Three years ago my son bought a metal detector, and I got the bright idea to go out there. I called up the ranger in charge of that area, and believe it or not he gave us permission to go out there. I told him I'd swing by and show him what we found, but he said he didn't want to know. LOL He did tell me that the area was an old settlement back in the 1880's called Bluff City. He thought the cabin area in question was an old camp for loggers - turns out he knew exactly where I was talking about, because he had walked past the chimney many times himself. Turns out he was right - see the last pic - we found two crosscut saw blades that were covered in rust - they were about three inches below the surface. We also found a ton of nails (as you would expect), and various pieces of metal - not sure what most of it was for.
Remember --- we had permission to be there and dig.........
I imagine that fireplace won't last another ten years or so. If that place could talk I imagine it would tell some woeful stories of people who worked super hard to just try and scrape by.
