Turn on to load records for the area on screen (county zoom or closer).
Scan old maps or load historic places to rank leads here.
Reports you run are saved here automatically, and open with no signal.
Old USGS maps start in 1884, so colonial and early-1800s dates come from historical records, not the map scan. Map positions on 1880s–1910s sheets can be off by 50–150 yards; use the lidar to find the actual house pad.
Built on your phone from the raw 1 m lidar at street zoom and closer. Slide Contrast left to bring out shallower features.
Low sun and 3–6× exaggeration bring out faint cellar holes and old road ruts on flat coastal ground. Swing the sun around; features parallel to the light disappear.
Private land is not shown. You still need the owner's permission there.
Cellar holes, privies, and wells. Often 3–6 m across. Privies and wells were trash dumps and hold the most artifacts.
House and outbuilding platforms. On the Georgia coast, look for low tabby rubble mounds near old field edges and high ground near the marsh.
Old wagon roads and trails, often doubled ruts. Search where they cross creeks, meet other roads, or pass house sites.
Old crop beds and rice or cotton fields. Field edges and the corners where people rested and camped beat the open field.
Rice canals, drainage, and property lines. Landings where a canal meets the river saw heavy traffic.
Earthworks, gun emplacements, kilns, or shell middens. Middens and burial mounds are archaeological sites; leave them alone and report them.
Rural family plots were usually kept within sight of the house. A small cemetery, a cluster of old live oaks, or a stand of cedars and yucca in an otherwise plain field often marks a homesite nearby. Never detect or dig in or beside a cemetery.
Squares are buildings found on old USGS maps, dated by the earliest map they appear on. A square marked gone was on an old map but has no building mapped there today: the classic abandoned-homesite signal. Circles are documented places from historical records.
Tap anywhere on the map for ground height, lidar date and resolution, who manages the land, and which old maps cover that spot.
Saves every spot, find, photo, and hunt track in one file. Keep it in Files or iCloud Drive. To move to a new phone, or after clearing Safari, tap Restore and pick that file.
Everything is saved on this phone only. Back up now and then. The GPX export also loads into onX, Gaia, or Google Earth.
Metal Detecting Club · Dirt therapy
Send them the app. It's free, needs no account, and their finds stay private on their own phone.
The app checks land status for you: tap any spot on the map.