Uncharted History is first and foremost a treasure hunting group, made up of a variety of individuals each encompassing a different background and/or discipline.  Our goal is to research, locate and remove caches, treasures and minerals, ensuring to follow local laws and regulations…protection of the environment in which many of these treasures are buried, is our first priority. We at Uncharted History believe that preserving these “treasures” for future generations should be our main goal. Once a treasure has been found we will work extensively with local museums and organizations to ensure the history and preservation of the treasure, will last for generations. We will make a size-able donation to these organizations and share all information that led us to discovering the treasure along with our story.

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Research

            Our first stage in the treasure hunting process involves scouring old books & magazines, the internet, and interviewing people that have knowledge of treasure stories. This helps us create a data base of possible treasure targets that we can investigate.  

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Verify

            We then move on to verifying the legitimacy of these treasure targets.  The first question we ask is "Could this be a valid treasure target and could it possibly exist? If we answer "Yes!" then we then dig deeper into the stories and see what is actual fact and what is fiction, this could easily be called the “Rabbit Hole Stage” because there tends to be a lot of stories regarding these treasures and sifting through them and determining their validity is very time consuming and one story usually leads to another and another…

 

Research

            After validating our treasure targets and narrowing down our list, we begin to research each individual target. Sometimes you find a lot of information quickly on the targets, but most of the time the information is found by sifting through old texts, historic maps, personal accounts, diaries, historians and getting personal accounts from locals.  This is the most exhausting stage (physically, mentally and financially), usually it involves searching old books, who’s landmarks, names and towns no longer exists and then having to dig further and further to find these landmarks. Many times these old books are hundreds and hundreds of pages long, and typically you are looking for a few key words to match up to the story. Once the team believes the research bears enough information from all sources to narrow down a search location we move on to the next stage.

 

Evaluate

            In this stage we look at the possible locations for the treasure target and through various current mapping applications, and photos we plan out our trip.  We look at the topography of the location, who owns the land, and how to get to the location.  If the target is on state owned lands, we move to seeking permission from local park rangers, or state agencies. Most of the time if you ask ahead and have a solid plan they will allow you to dig and issue you a permit. If the target lies on private property we then contact the land owners and discuss what we are looking to do, what our goals are and what they are looking for from us. Once the dig site or recovery site is locked down we then proceed to the location.  On location we ensure to take photos first before digging or disturbing the environment to ensure we return the location to how we found it or as close as possible.

 

Recover

            Once the treasure target location is secured and documented, we begin the recover process and depending on the target, employ different tactics some of which include: metal detection, diving, digging, and sifting.  Once we recover the treasure target and anything related to the target, we will work with the local community to help document and build on and close any existing stories and accounts of the treasure. We will also donate to the local museums to help build a display and ensure future generations can benefit from the find.