I Think I Found Why They Lived Alone on Top of This Mountain...

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:05]You have got to be kidding me.

[00:00:11]I cannot believe it right now.

[00:00:15]Unbelievable.

[00:00:18]Speechless.

[00:00:24]Well, hey folks. My name is Brad. If you happen to be new to my videos, I explore the mountains of Vermont, searching for treasure with my metal detector. And today, I find myself here in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I hiked about 30 minutes up the side of a Vermont mountain and made my way to this old stone foundation from a home that was here from the end of the 1700s all the way up until around the 1890s.

[00:00:49]Now, most places that I visit like this are part of a farming community.

[00:00:53]There'll be an old road with multiple old buildings on it. But this one, for some reason, is all by itself on this mountain. Who these people were, what they were up to, and why they wanted their privacy so bad is a mystery to me.

[00:01:07]But hopefully we can figure that out by the things that we find in the ground today. Now, if this happens to be one of the first of my videos that you've seen, I publish one of these every single Friday. So, if you like what you see here today, consider hitting that subscribe button or just come on back next week. I'm going to get that metal detector turned on. See what we can find.

[00:01:26]It's a very loud 82.

[00:01:36]It's round. What do we think?

[00:01:40]Wow, that's a big beautiful button.

[00:01:44]Significance, I don't think so. I think it's just a pretty floral button. But that is a great find. Imagine a whole coat with these and they would have been golden right in color at the time.

[00:01:58]That's a beauty.

[00:02:03]This is a 65.

[00:02:12]Oo, look at that. Well, what we have here is a rather common find for me at old places like this. You probably recognize it because they haven't changed much over the last 200 years. This is, of course, a drawer pull. That being said, this one in particular is quite a bit more unique than the ones I typically find. And the first reason is many of them that I find are just copper, right?

[00:02:38]They would have polished them up copper color. They would have looked beautiful at the time and then their time in the ground makes them green. This one we can see was clearly goldplated. Much of it is still intact. And the pole itself is incredibly sturdy for something having been in the ground likely from the end of the 1700s or very early 1800s. Now, the other unique part about this is that we are in the middle of nowhere.

[00:03:07]Something that always surprises me is that these folks who lived way up in the mountains would cart up this beautiful furniture, chests of drawers to where you would expect to just find like a hunting camp. This though certainly was a home or perhaps even a business of some kind. And they had a beautiful goldplated chest of drawers. Beautiful find. Always a surprise at a place like this. Let's see what else we can find out here.

[00:03:38]This feels like sheet metal, but it's up in the '9s. High 90s.

[00:03:46]This That's a buckle.

[00:03:53]The reason it was so high is because it was shallow and solid brass iron pin. Of course, it's a gunshot.

[00:04:06]It is 4 days before turkey season, so maybe they're just target practicing. Or maybe they're poaching.

[00:04:16]Cool buckle. Nice. Right on the stone wall, too.

[00:04:20]Remains of the stone wall.

[00:04:23]This is actually a quite loud 61.

[00:04:28]Based on how loud it is, I am going to guess it's modern, like a shotgun shell, but we'll see.

[00:04:43]Well, maybe not.

[00:04:50]I got my hands on it.

[00:04:55]Wow.

[00:04:56]Well, this piece is broken, unfortunately. It is a fragment of probably a baseballsized jingle bell. We can tell because it is made out of a bronze. We have this thick line that would have gone around the center of the bell. And we can even almost make out where one of the holes would have been up here. Now, a bell this large, while it could have been used for, you know, like a sleigh around a horse's harness, many of the farms up in the mountains of Vermont around the end of the 1800s were sheep farms. So, this very well could have been around the neck of a sheep. But the thing that I find most interesting about this fragment of bell doesn't actually have anything to do with the bell whatsoever.

[00:05:39]It was what was attached to the bell, and that is a piece of charcoal. Now, I am right next to the foundation. Why would there be charcoal right next to the foundation? Well, more than likely, this building burnt down like many of them did in those days. You have to remember these people were cooking with fire multiple times a day inside the house. They were heating with fire. They were lighting with candles. Folks homes burnt down all the time. It was unfortunately a very common occurrence and it seems very likely that's what happened to this building and may even be why it was abandoned. In any case, we found a pretty cool old fragment of Bell. Maybe we'll find more of it or if we're lucky enough, we'll find a complete one. Really cool.

[00:06:47]All right, this is a pretty nice target.

[00:06:49]79 sounds like it might be deep.

[00:07:04]Think I found it here.

[00:07:07]This appears to be a rounded old button. The flat ones, 99% of them are blank, but sometimes these rounded ones do have emblems engraving. Appears this one is totally smooth, just like the flat ones.

[00:07:28]That's a great sign. This was very, very deep. Right next to the old foundation hole. Very, very cool. Old old button.

[00:07:39]All right. Well, this feels like a beer can. Very loud. 91 loud tells me it's probably aluminum or right on top.

[00:07:52]I feel it. Whatever it is.

[00:07:55]Oh, actually cool. Not a beer can. Well, what we have here is a fairly common find, believe it or not, at old places like this. Even old places in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Take a look at it here. It is a solid brass plate. Has all these little holes in it. This is what we call a movement plate for an old mantel clock.

[00:08:20]This is the piece that would have held all of the gears in place. There would have been a matching plate just like this one on the other side, sandwiching all of the gears inside. And it looks like it's probably the other plate that has the hole for the hands of the clock.

[00:08:37]Old places like this, folks still needed clocks. They would have more than likely had pocket watches. But inside the home, they would have the beautiful mantel clock in the wooden cabinet, maybe even up on the mantle above the fireplace.

[00:08:50]You know, a big beautiful wooden mantel clock doesn't really seem like something you would just throw out if it stopped working. You would get this fixed, which makes even more sense that this house burned down. It was in the house itself and then found its way into the ground.

[00:09:06]Really cool old find from the 1800s. And at one time a beautiful centerpiece in this old house. Well, this target is a bit complex.

[00:09:16]If it is something good, there might be something iron also hitting the hole.

[00:09:23]Oh, beauty.

[00:09:27]Look at that bell. Really beautiful bronze.

[00:09:32]Second bell of the day. This one is also crushed, but we can see there's an O at the bottom, which is the maker. Judging by the place and the style of metal that it's made out of, I'm going to have to say that this is uh end of the 1700s or very very early 1800s.

[00:09:51]That is an amazing find. I love finding these little bells. Jingle bell, sleigh bell, croal bell, beauty.

[00:10:00]All right. One of the nicest targets all day. A real nice loud 86 85.

[00:10:14]This is it. It's round.

[00:10:27]Well, when I first found this thing, I had no idea what it was. I thought maybe it was going to be a bridal rosette for a horse or possibly even like a piece of an old canning jar. But as I started kind of wiping away the dirt, it revealed some text and it is more amazing than I could have possibly imagined. If we take a look at it here, we can see that there is letters all over it. It's hard to read, but we can make it out. It says the Edison Electro Galvanic battery. And when I think battery, I mean, how interesting could a battery possibly be, right? Well, luckily, I have a little bit of cell service and I was able to look this one up and it is incredible. Now, these were made around 1890. And while the bigger ones did have their uses as mining lighting and some of them were used in the railroad for switches and for lighting, these smaller varieties were actually used for medicine like electroshock therapy medicine. During that time, it was fairly controversial. It was a brand new thing. People didn't really understand it what they were doing to people's bodies. Makes me wonder, you know, all the way out here in the middle of nowhere, were people coming here to get some uh electro medicine? Incredible find. The story that goes along with it, the beautiful font that is on here, the Edison electro galvanic battery.

[00:12:00]What were these people doing out here?

[00:12:03]Shocking themselves, I guess. Great piece of history. And uh I learned something new. Amazing.

[00:12:28]Well, this whole area is typically just totally engulfed in ferns. All species of ferns. And only one of them that I'm aware of is actually edible when they are in its fiddle head stage. And this is the species. You can see these old brown stocks still sticking up from last year. That is a great indication that these are the right ones. These are ostrich ferns.

[00:12:56]And I'm not going to pick any of them because I'm not going to bring them home. But you can see down here, of course, we have the classic curled up fiddle head. And they're absolutely everywhere. Now, I say they're absolutely everywhere. These are the only ostrich ferns I saw, this patch right here. Elsewhere, they must have been some other variety because um I haven't been seeing these. I probably should pick some and bring them home and eat them. Uh because they are delicious, but I don't have a great way to transport them.

[00:13:29]But uh I I know they're here now. So maybe when I'm more prepared next spring, come out and harvest some.

[00:13:39]All right. Right next to some new ferns here, we have a solid 81. Sounds really good.

[00:13:48]That's a shell casing, but it is a big rimfire with a J on the end.

[00:13:59]Oh no, it's a U. believe U is Union Metallic.

[00:14:04]It's a 1880s, I believe, cartridge. That's pretty cool. I found a lot of shell casings out here. I've probably found two dozen of them already today. Shell casings and shotgun shells. But this is the first old one. That's a great find.

[00:14:29]All right, we have a very nice target here. Solid 85 the down ferns and a big piece of uh quartz crystal in the hole, too. Not going to be good luck.

[00:14:53]Ooh, big button. What do we think?

[00:15:01]Matches the one we found earlier. This one, the shank is missing, which gives us pretty good idea of how it fell off the person.

[00:15:12]Yeah, I think they're actually think they're different. Very close, but not quite the same. That's really cool.

[00:15:21]All right. Okay. Well, this is the greatest target of the day here. Solid 91.

[00:15:28]I'm going to dig careful in case it's something really great.

[00:15:40]You have got to be kidding me.

[00:15:44]I cannot believe it right now.

[00:15:48]Oh my god. I was hoping for like a silver dime.

[00:15:54]Unbelievable.

[00:15:56]Unbelievable.

[00:15:59]I cannot believe it. Absolute shock. All day I had just been hoping for an old coin. Typically the higher numbers on the metal detector have a better chance of being an old coin. I would have settled for a wheat scent out here. But this thing I just found, longtime viewers of my channel and my videos will know exactly what this is and how much I love finding them. This is an incredible full brass shoe buckle. Shoe buckles were in fashion around the end of the 1700s all the way up until maybe around the 1820s.

[00:16:36]They stopped being in fashion and people stopped wearing them. This one is special because the chape and the fork, these two inner parts that actually interacted with the leather strap are also made out of brass. I can't tell you maybe 80% of them that I find those two pieces are made out of iron and they rust away and they just disappear into the ground. This is the classic stereotypical pilgrim footwear. When you think about a pilgrim wearing buckles on their shoes, this is what they would wear. And it is always an amazing look back into the 1700s when people were walking around up on top of this mountain with buckles on their shoes. I can't believe it. I thought for sure this was going to be a penny or, you know, even possibly a silver dime or something. This though is way better than any of that stuff.

[00:17:34]All right, folks. Well, I am calling it quits for the day. What an awesome place this was. A lot of the classic 1700s and 1800s finds here. Buttons, even a shoe buckle. But that electro medicine battery plate really has me at a loss for words. I mean, was this just a home and the people happened to have enough money to buy one of these machines to use on themselves? or could it have been a doctor and people were coming up to the top of this mountain for treatment?

[00:18:05]Not sure we'll ever have the answer to those questions, but I look forward to hearing what you folks think. Thanks again for watching. I hope you enjoyed today's video. And if you happen to enjoy it so much you'd like to see a slightly longer version with more finds, more sight context, and even some bloopers, that big bird just flew by.

[00:18:23]Thought maybe it was an owl, but I think it was a hawk.

[00:18:26]Owl.

[00:18:29]Maybe it was a deerfly. Consider becoming a Green Mountain member. All the information for that will be down below this video in the comment section.

[00:18:37]Thanks again for watching and hopefully you'll join me next Friday for another new adventure somewhere out here in the mountains of Vermont.