Welcome to SCAVENGEOLOGY

Recent Blog Posts:

• Thomas Jefferson’s “Great Claw” from the Greenbrier Valley
  June 23, 2020
  While Thomas Jefferson became Vice President of the United States in 1797, he also became President of the American Philosophical Society - a position once held by Benjamin Franklin, who founded the society in 1743. When Jefferson arrived in DC to assume these positions, he had with him some massive bones which came out of a cave in the Greenbrier Valley. …
• Saving the Bell from Old Sweet Chalybeate Springs
  June 22, 2020
  This weekend we went and picked up the old dinner bell from the old Sweet Chalybeate Springs resort, or as it was also called, Red Sweet Springs. We also picked up a load of antique handmade bricks from the remnants of the old Crow's Tavern, in Crows, Virginia - which was just down the road from Sweet Chalybeate. …
• Recent Fur Trade Finds
  June 18, 2020
  Some recent finds we acquired from the coastline of Michigan in the areas surrounding Fort Michilimackinac and L’ Arbre Croche. These are all …
• The West Virginia-Made “Mississippi Rifle”
  June 17, 2020
  The M1841 U.S. percussion rifle, manufactured in Harpers Ferry, (West) Virginia, is one of the best-looking U.S. military issue rifles in our nation's history. You may know it by its other name - the "Mississippi Rifle," or by its characteristic brass hardware, short length, and walnut stock. But did you know how it obtained its name, given that it was made in West Virginia? …
• “Fire Strikers,” a.k.a., “Strike-a-Lites” in the American fur trade
  June 15, 2020
  A popular tool in the days of the 18th century North American frontier was the "fire striker, or "strike-a-lite," or "fire steel" or, well there are a number of names for these things. The purpose is obviously to start a fire. The design is simple: a piece of carbon steel, which is struck against a piece of flint, chert, or similar rock, thus making sparks, which would then fall onto some sort of tinder, thus creating fire. …