The Importance of Research by Charles Garrett

 

The Importance of Research

"Research is a key to successful treasure hunting. Without proper and adequate research, you are shooting in the dark. Your efficiency and likelihood of successful recovery increases proportionately as the amount of your research increases. Without research you may not be as successful as you should or could be since 95% of a successful recovery usually depends on research. Always remember that you must go where the treasure is located. Even the world's finest metal detector can only inform you about what is beneath its searchcoil."

Charles Garrett 
 
 
 

Central Texas Treasure Club Meeting Tonight! Tuesday, February 3rd.

 Central Texas Treasure Club Regular Monthly Meeting Tonight! 6:30 p.m. at the old Early Chamber of Commerce Bldg. at 104 E. Industrial Blvd. in Early, Texas. Our monthly meetings are held on the first Tuesday of every month at this time and location. Visitors are always welcome and encouraged to attend!

See you there!

Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club

 

Central Texas Treasure Club Library Additions & New Policy

 

Central Texas Treasure Club Library

I will be adding some more treasure hunting/metal detecting books to our Club Library over the next few months. Only current dues-paid Members may borrow these books. The one that will be added for the February 3rd meeting is a fascinating book - "Follow the Signs - A Treasure Hunter's Handbook" by Dayne Chastain. We gave some of them away at our 2025 Central Texas Treasure Club Open Hunt but we didn't get a Sponsor for this copy. One of the perks of being CTTC President is that I'll get to read our library books first!   I read this one and loved it. 

 New Library Policy - Our CTTC Secretary/Treasurer Jen Evetts will be in charge of keeping up with the book borrowers, due dates, and such. Members may only check out one book per month. A $5 late fee will be charged to any Member who doesn't return a book to the Library before or at the next meeting after the book is checked out. $5 will be added for each month thereafter that it's overdue. 

Thank you,

Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club

 

 

CTTC Members Detecting Old Brown County Fairgrounds in 2014

 

I took this photo of our Central Texas Treasure Club Members in January, 2014 when we were given permission to metal detect the old Brown County Fairgrounds Racetrack for one morning. About 15 of us showed up for that one-time opportunity when the property was in the custody of a local bank. We were honored to have a 90-year-old man share his memories of the old track. He told us he went to it when he was a young man. He said they had horse races and motorcycle races there. I was excited because I knew that William C. "Bloody Bill" Anderson regularly attended and bet on horse races there as his youngest son Patrick Henry Anderson told of how he used to go to the races with his father who would leave home with his pockets bulging with silver dollars. I also suspect Jesse Woodson James attended them and may have even had one of his horses entered.

A couple of Members found a few old coins that day. I didn't find any coins but my prize for the day was this very small horseshoe that I found with my detector. I have it hanging on my Relic Fence in the backyard along with many other of my most interesting old iron and metal relics that were all found with my detectors. We were also able to locate the concrete foundation where the old Grandstands once stood. The old track is on private property now and I don't know who owns it. The field is located behind the DPS Office and the old Staples store in Commerce Square in Brownwood.

Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club

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Sharing Treasure Hunting Tips

 I'm brushing up on my real treasure hunting skills after reading Rosie Priddy's amazing new book: "Bud Hardcastle: The Truth Tracker". Last night, I began reading "Follow the Signs: A Treasure Hunter's Handbook" (1997) by Dayne Chastain. This book is humorous but it also has some very important treasure signs and true treasure stories in it. I made note of the following story because it provides a good tip to locating hidden treasure caches. This one caught my attention

***

Pages 27 & 28 - "...Hog pens are a favorite place for old farmers to hide their treasure, hog pens and fence posts.

Another hog pen north of Wewoka, Oklahoma proved more profitable. Jett had a friend from Wewoka who ran a general store. This friend told Jett about a hog farmer who, like the other one, would sometimes find coins when he went out to feed his pigs. These coins, however, were old silver dollars.

Jett and his friend went out and, with the farmer's permission, ran the metal detector around the hog pen. The land was sloping at about a thirty degree angle. At the higher end of the pen, Jett found and dug up a big bean post full of antique silver dollars.

They figured the pot had gotten tilted somehow and the silver dollars were just washing down into the pen a few at a time from the broken pot. Jett and his friend split the treasure with the delighted old farmer and went their separate ways."

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This is one reason I love to hunt around old farmsteads.  

 

- Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club 

 

 

Meeting Tonight, Tuesday, January 6th!

 Our Central Texas Treasure Club will hold our 1st regular monthly meeting of 2026 tonight, Tuesday, January 6th.  Our regular meetings are held on the first Tuesday of every month.  We meet at the old Early Chamber of Commerce Bldg. at 104 E. Industrial Blvd. in Early, Texas and the meeting begins at 6:30.

A new order of our amethyst CTTC shirts is in.  The price of those have risen again so the price of the new shirts will be $24, however, the previous 4 styles of Club shirts will still be available at tonight's meeting for $21 each.  After tonight, the price of ALL Club shirts will increase to $24 each so save a few bucks and buy your shirts at tonight's meeting!

I will be going over some of the new ideas I have for our Club this year at tonight's meeting so you won't want to miss it.  To fund these new Club projects and activities, we'll hold Special Fundraising Raffles at every meeting this year.  All proceeds from these Raffles will be used to pay for these events.  

Tonight's Special Raffle will be for a new copy of Steve Wilson's popular book "The Spider Rock Treasure: A Texas Mystery of Lost Spanish Gold"!  Raffle ticket prices for this Special Raffle are $2 each and will only be sold at the meeting.  You may purchase as many tickets as you want and both Members and Visitors may purchase them.  The drawing will be held after Finds of the Month voting is finished. 

See you tonight!

Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club 

325-646-1000 (no text)

 

2026 - Back to Our Roots!

 

Get Ready! 2026 is Going to be a Great Year to be a Central Texas Treasure Club Member!

Over the past several months, one recurring thought has kept coming to mind about our Club's future and how to make it brighter and a lot more fun for our Members. As some of you know, when my lifelong friend Friou Allen and I founded our Club in August, 1981, we intended to encompass ALL forms of treasure hunting into it. They include arrowhead hunting, metal detecting for small targets or "coin-shooting" as it was popularly called back then, gold mining, fossils, and especially locating outlaw treasure caches and individual "post-hole" banks where people buried their savings when there were no banks around or when they didn't trust banks for whatever reasons. That's why we named our Club the Central Texas Treasure Club, not just a metal detecting club. Over the decades since our Club's founding, we've gotten away from many of these exciting aspects of treasure hunting. Well, in 2026, I'm going to lead our Club "back to our roots" as we incorporate more of these aspects into our Club Events and Activities!

Over the decades since 1981, I've pursued many of these other pursuits and I've learned a lot about them that I want to share with our Members so you can enjoy them too. I've come to firmly believe that there is more lost and buried treasure right here in Central Texas than there is in any other area of its size in the United States and possibly in the world! We're going to go after some of it in 2026! I've also been formulating some activities for our Members, such as field trips, hosting guest speakers who are experts in these various fields, as well as giving lessons to our Members on gold panning and sluicing, deciphering treasure signs and symbols (which can be found all over Brown County and Central Texas IF you know what to look for), and gaining permissions for our Club to seek out these lost treasures.

I will outline some of these activities at our regular monthly meetings throughout 2026. We'll also be holding Special Fundraising Raffles, every month, to pay for whatever expenses we need to achieve these goals. Our Secretary/Treasurer Jen Evetts will earmark all proceeds from these Special Raffles exclusively for that purpose.

As a result of needing to prepare and organize these exciting activities, I will be leaning on our Officers to do a lot of the other work that I've done in the past. I'll outline what that entails at our next monthly meeting on Tuesday, January 6th.

2026 - CTTC Back to our Roots Year!

Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club

Attached are photos of some "old-time" treasure hunters who sought the big treasures and found some.