Civil War Metal Detecting: How to Find & Relic Hunt Forgotten Trenches

It is true enough that millions of documents and over a million photographs created during the Civil War survived to be a part of the vast historical archives of that war in our world today. But… it is also very true that hundreds of thousands of important documents comprised of battle and skirmish reports, locations of soldiers camps, correspondence between Generals and other officers and the diaries and journals of individual soldiers did NOT survive the war but were lost when courthouses burned with all records therein destroyed, when soldiers keeping meticulous accounts of their daily experiences in the war were killed or wounded on the battlefield or died of illness or their wounds in field hospitals and overwhelmed medical staff simply threw their personal belongings away, when couriers carrying reports were captured and their documents read and then thrown away by the enemy.  

Modern “Trench Warfare…” The Art of Finding and Recognizing Lost Civil War Trenches and Rifle Pits and How to Metal Detect Them…!!!

All of this loss of written records from that war contributed heavily to the situation that there are still thousands of Civil War camp sites and skirmishes and smaller battles whose locations are still unknown.   Many of these camp and battle sites are still located in more remote areas of the Civil War states that see little human traffic other than game hunters during the hunting season.  A number of them, however, do get found each year by relic hunters who are willing to walk those woods in search of sites for which no known records can be discovered. 

One of the key ways, that Civil War relic hunters “in the know” find these previously undetected sites is by watching for signs of defensive trenches and rifle pits dug by the soldiers to protect those now lost camp sites or to provide cover for themselves during battles that went on longer than a few hours.

There are plenty of photos such as the photos above, that can be accessed online that show the extensive trenches and fortifications that were constructed at places where major sieges took place like Petersburg, VA and Atlanta, GA.  Those kinds of trenches and defensive works, however, are NOT the ones I am speaking of in this article whose discovery will alert a relic hunter to potential artifact finds from previously unknown sites. 

Having Civil War relic hunted for over 50 years, now, I have found a number of previously unknown skirmish and camp sites by being alerted to their existence by first discovering the trenches and rifle pits that were built to defend them.  These defenses that were just abandoned after they were no longer needed and have remained largely undisturbed to this day by man’s activities do NOT look like they did 160 years ago during the Civil War.  The passage of a lot of time has brought major changes to their appearance due to erosion, rain and snow and a new crop of fallen leaves with each passing year. 

In this article, I will show you what they look like now and what you will have to do upon discovering any of them to have a good chance of recovering some great Civil War relics from… and around… them. 

Finding and Metal Detecting Civil War Rifle Pits 

First, I want to discuss RIFLE PITS.  These were basically two or three-man “foxholes” designed for the Pickets (Guards and Sentinels) positioned usually up to a quarter mile from their regiment’s campsite whose job it was to protect the camp from surprise attacks.  If the terrain was not flat, these rifle pits would be constructed on the slope of a hill so any attacking enemy would be at the disadvantage of having to attack uphill.  These rifle pits were dug about three to four feet deep and the dirt was piled on the front side of them facing downhill or toward the direction the enemy was likely to come so little of the pickets bodies were exposed if they had to fire on an advancing enemy force to alert their camp. 

The rifle pits, because of the cover they provided the occupants, helped delay the attacking enemy’s advance which gave the soldiers in the camp precious more time to form up their units and prepare for battle. 

On top of the mountain across the road from my front gate was a Union Cavalry camp.  When you walk into the woods across from my gate, you are at the base of a steep wooded slope.  About 200’ up the slope are still visible rifle pits forming three consecutive lines of defense.  The pits were dug about 70’ apart and the second row is about that much further up the slope and then the third row is about that much further from the second row of pits further up.  These rifle pits are now only about 18” deep. The mounded dirt in front of each one on the downhill side is not much higher than that now, if any.  If you came upon only one of them and did not see the others, you would be tempted to think that some tree had just uprooted in the past and after rotting away had left the hole in the ground you are seeing.  Seldom ever, would you find just one single rifle pit… when you find one… you look for more and when you find them in a pattern like the ones above I just mentioned, you KNOW that further up the hill you are going to find a Civil War campsite.

Whether or not you find any relics in and around the rifle pits depends on how much work you do to find them and how long those pits were occupied on a daily basis by soldiers.  The best chance of finding good pockets of relics in rifle pits is to dig them out all the way to their original bottom… then metal detect that bottom, making sure to metal detect the dirt you just dug out of them also.  Yes… it takes extra work to dig out a couple of feet of accumulated eroded soil and fallen leaf mulch to make those relic recoveries and not every hole you excavate in a trench or rifle pit to get to the bottom will be productive… but… hey… if you are not willing to do some serious digging, on sites like that, I suggest that Civil War relic hunting trenches and rifle pits is not something you should engage in.  Success will vary, but occasionally you will hit a rare relic that makes it all worthwhile.  Be sure to metal detect the slope of the dirt piled in front of the pit for fired bullets. That will tell you if there was any fighting that went on at that location.

Sometimes, if the materials were close at hand in the landscape, the soldiers would fortify their rifle pits with stacked rock or even fence rails, if any farm fences were nearby.

Study the included photos of rifle pits as they look today so you will recognize them right away when encountered in woods you are exploring.  While I have found Civil War relics in and around rifle pits, the greater value of their discovery to the relic hunter is that they are an indication of a good-sized campsite somewhere up ahead that could easily hold hundreds… or even thousands… (depending on how many soldiers were there and how long they camped there.) more Civil War relics for you to find and recover.  Keep in mind that where trees have uprooted in the past, the remaining hole that is left can resemble a rifle pit if the tree is long gone.  Sometimes past storms uprooted a lot of trees in an area and so there could be a lot of these holes. If there is no pattern to the holes… random distances apart… and if the dirt pushed up on one side of any of them in the area faces different directions than the one an enemy would have come from, you have found long-gone tree holes.  

Finding and Metal Detecting Civil War Trenches

Now let’s talk about TRENCHES.  When a good-sized group of soldiers, like an entire regiment numbering up to a little over a thousand, went into camp near enemy forces and it was likely that they were to be there for at least a month or more, the camp commander might order his troops to construct a defensive trench around the camp.  Please consult the diagram I drew with this article to see what these trenches would have looked like when first dug and… how they would look today. 

In the Northern Virginia woods I hunted the site of a famous… or should I say, infamous… Union Camp called by the soldiers “CAMP MEASLES.” It had gotten its name and its fame from the fact that a measles epidemic had taken the lives of 5000 Union Soldiers there. The camp had been laid out with row after row of raised dirt platforms about a foot high that were the size of a standard four-man tent. These had been built by the soldiers to keep the floors of the tent from becoming nothing but mud when heavy rains occurred as the terrain of the camp was flat and not good for proper drainage during wet weather.  The camp was occupied for quite a while due to the epidemic and the healthy soldiers had been kept busy digging a defensive trench just like the one I show in the accompany diagram on trenches then and now.   I only got to hunt there one day as the guest of the person who had the permission so I did not have time to properly dig down to the bottom of the trench there and check any large amount of trench bottom soil. The 3’deep test hole I did dig, however, that exposed three feet of the trench bottom about 2’ wide, rewarded me with several dropped Minie Balls (Unfired rifle bullets lost by soldiers manning those trenches).  That convinced me that anyone who methodically dug out a section of that trench at a time about 6’ long and 4’ wide, detected it, filled it back in with the dirt from the next dig the same size, was going to find a LOT of Civil War relics as they progressed along the trench bottom.  

When I was hunting the extensive trenches on the Mobile, Alabama battlefields called Spanish Fort and Blakeley, I heard about a local father-son team of relic hunters who specialized in digging to the bottom of the trenches, which had an average 2 to 3 feet of collected dirt and leaves on top, and then carefully metal detecting them.  The teen-age son found a beautiful 5-dollar U.S. gold coin doing this that was a rare date and that appraised for over $6000.00 way back in the 1970’s!  THAT kind of find is why dedicated Civil War relic hunters will dig out those trenches.  They KNOW that when they do get to the bottom of them, they will be metal detecting soil that no one ever has before them. The rare gold coin was no doubt sent to a Reb soldier by his family as the soldiers manning those trenches were not paid in gold. In the course of the battle there, the coin was lost and quickly covered by the loose sandy soil knocked off the inside sloped wall of the trench by the firing activity of the soldiers shooting over the top of it.

As with rifle pits, trenches discovered in wooded and remote areas will be built with the dirt from them placed on the downhill sloping side. They will generally be found near the top of the hill with the camp being protected by them behind them within a short distance.  If the ground terrain is relatively flat, then the dirt will be piled on the side from which an enemy force was likely to attack. There may be breaks between sections of the trenches where the original level of the ground has not been disturbed by digging. These were sometimes left so that soldiers could quickly charge out and counter-attack any enemy in front of the trenches.

The most frequently encountered “trenches” in wooded and more remote areas are not from Civil War activity but are what is left of old “fire lines” plowed by bulldozers through the woods to halt the progress of forest fires. These fire line trenches are usually not deeper than 18” and there may be a lip of dirt a half foot high or a little more on each side of the trench, which serves to quickly identify them as being non-Civil War in origin.

Wherever you find Civil War trenches like those in the accompanying photos, you are near a campsite or… on a battlefield.  In the case of campsites, you will also find a good water source close by that could be easily accessed by the soldiers in the camp.  No water = no campsite.  If the trench was constructed hastily for defense in an ongoing battle, there will be fired bullets found in the front raised wall of the trench facing the enemy. They will also be found in the soil for a hundred feet or more in front of the trench and… in the soil behind the trench. If the trench is built on a slope, that slope will likely have kept the bullets fired at the entrenched soldiers from going very far past the trench, itself.

Sometimes, you will discover extensive rifle pits and trenches that instantly fill the mind with visions of great relic finds… and a lot of them… only to find nothing when you metal detect all around and in them.  One time in a remote and thickly wooded area in Arkansas, I was actually looking for treasure signs left by the Knights of the Golden Circle and came upon a hill that covered about five to ten acres and was about a hundred feet high from the bottom to the top.  I discovered a circle of well-dug and well-preserved rifle pits that went all the way around the hill and knew there would be a Civil War campsite on the top of the hill. Since the location was very far from any dwellings, farms or human activity areas other than logging, I was sure that this site had never been metal detected.  First, I metal detected the rifle pits and found only a couple of modern shotgun shells.  I then metal detected my way up to the top of the hill, without getting any metal signals and could see, when I got there, where spots had been leveled for tent bottoms. Probably for officer’s tents.  This place had had quite a bit of work done to prepare it as a campsite and that alone indicated that the camp commander thought they would be camped there for a while.  They obviously were not, because all I found for most of day’s hunt there was one small square nail that would have dated back to the Civil War.  The only other metal objects found were a few modern shotgun shells.  I am experienced enough to tell when someone else has already cleaned out a campsite of the great majority of its relics.  There was no evidence that anyone had ever hunted there with a metal detector before I found the site.

So why was this “untouched” campsite such a disappointment when it came to the relics I expected to find but did not?  I have a pretty good theory on that score:  I suspect that about the time they were finishing up the rifle pits and raised tent bottoms on top the hill, a courier arrived with urgent orders for that unit to march as fast as possible to some battle under way at the time to re-enforce other units in danger of being routed.  There were a number of battles being waged about that time in a fifty-mile circle around this site. 

My point in telling this story is that the discovery of rifle pits and trenches does NOT “guarantee” great relic finds, but… relics ARE found around these sites much more often than not.

If the soil the trenches were dug in is loose and sandy, more of that soil will have eroded down into the trench bottom than if they had been dug in hard clay.  So… you will have to dig deeper to get to the bottom in sandy soil but usually, the loose soil makes the digging go easier.  Clay soils will be harder to dig out but you probably will not have to dig as deep to get to the bottom and the fallen leaves that turned into soil over the many years should have helped keep the clay soil from returning to its normal hardness. 

Keep in mind that trenches that were used by soldiers for weeks or months will have had rain fall in them and their bottoms have become mud several inches deep.  The soldiers manning those trenches will have churned up that mud and anything lost will have disappeared into it and gone to the bottom where the soil turned hard again. So… once you have dug what appears to be the bottom of the trench… where the soil has turned hard again, the relics you will find could be several inches or more deep below the bottom of the trench. 

On one occasion, while I was metal detecting a somewhat filled in trench on the Spanish Fort part of the Mobile battlefield.  I got a strong iron signal right in the middle of the trench.  I dug down a foot in the two feet of sandy soil that had eroded back into the trench over the many years since it had been dug and hit what I thought was a piece of iron pipe sticking straight up.  I thought at first, it was a surveyor’s iron stake marking a property corner but when I dug out another 4” of soil from around it, I discovered that I had found a Springfield Rifle bayonet in great condition embedded in the bottom of the trench. How did it get there?  I suspect some Yankee soldier stuck it in the bottom of the trench with it attached to his rifle.  When the command came to charge out of the trench, he grabbed his rifle and when he went to jerk the bayonet out of the ground, it detached from the rifle and he did not have time to stop and pull it out of the clay at the bottom of the trench and re-install it on his weapon.  He moved on in the charge and never got back for whatever reason to reclaim his bayonet.  The feet of the men climbing the high wall of the trench to make the charge pushed a lot of sandy soil down into the trench and covered the bayonet from view.

The trenches on that battlefield were very unusual in that there were five lines of them protecting the Reb soldiers.  They Yanks had to take each trench by direct assault on them.  When they took the first trench line, they dug out on the OTHER side of the trench… the side they were on… for protection until the orders came to assault the next trench line. By the time all five lines of trenches had been captured by the Yankees, they all had been dug out on BOTH sides of the high trench wall.  So… we would find Confederate relics on one side of the trench walls and Union relics on the other side of them.  

Where are the most “lost trenches and rifle pits” likely to be found?”  In the wooded areas of the states where the most Civil War activity took place.  Sometimes, officers would make certain houses their headquarters and they would have their soldiers throw up trenches around the edges of the property to protect them from surprise attack… so… sometimes, there may be long-gone house sites near any trenches or rifle pits discovered.  

Lost trenches are not easy to find, simply because their existence and locations are still “lost” to the knowledge of man.  Searching for them is a far cry from driving 15 minutes to the local “Tot-Lot” and metal detecting newly lost coins almost in plain sight.   History has proven, however, that the diligent and determined relic hunters that do keep on looking eventually find some of these great metal detecting sites and do well in finding some really nice Civil War relics.  And let me mention in closing this article that I have found a number of trenches and rifle pits during my explorations in almost all of the Civil War states and besides the relics found, the satisfaction one gets from discovering Civil War history that has been lost for so many years is a nice reward in itself.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  I did not cover the much more extensive and elaborate types of trenches like those at the siege of Petersburg shown in one of the accompanying photos.  When a battle became a siege that went on for weeks or months, the soldiers on both sides constantly “improved” their trenches, digging them deeper and making “bombproof” dugouts that went deep underground to protect those inside from the constant artillery bombardments that went on during a siege.  The remains of extensive trenches like those shown are NOT going to be found out in remote areas where they are unknown.  The battles that created these huge trenchworks were just too big to get lost in history and those are all under state or federal protection with relic hunting them prohibited.