Diving The Coin Pile — George Landgrabe

Most of my early diving career was enjoyed out of Cleveland, Ohio. From that location a number of us dived East and West on Lake Erie and one of the main locations we visited was Buffalo, New York.

The area was on the outside of a breakwall that protected an old sea plane ramp and was in sight of the International Peace Bridge connecting the United States with Canada. Only 20 feet in depth, it allowed a diver to get the maximum time from a single tank of air.

The location was discovered by the Buffalo Aqua Club as they were running a tow sled behind a boat. The diver riding the sled noticed a large anchor and the club decided to raise it considering the artifact would make a great conversation piece. Some of the club members arranged to have a small barge, with a crane, come to the site in order to raise the anchor. One of the divers hooked up the crane cable to the anchor and as the barge started to raise it the diver noticed a number of coins spilling from the flukes of the anchor. He surfaced and said "I think we should look around here more thoroughly. Hence the "Coin Pile" was discovered and proved to be one of the most exciting inland diving treasure hunts for years to come.

Once we learned of the Coin Pile it drew us like a magnet over and over again. The ever existing possibility of finding old coins back as far as the early eighteen hundreds was a never ending draw that had us making weekend trips at least two to three times a Summer. We would camp out nearby or rent a large hotel room that would accommodate up to four people.

Seeing we only had a dive season from early June to late August, where the lake water temperature was bearable and the possibility of heavy winds at a minimum, we had to follow that old farmer saying “make hay while the sun shines”.

When we first started traveling to Buffalo in the early 60s, there were also a number of artifacts along with the coins. Most of these were just lying on the surface or took little digging to uncover. We found clay pipes, old bottles of both clay and glass, brass keys along with locks, pocket knives, various tools, parts of a ship, animal bones, small pistols and as many square nails as you could carry.

Most of the items were in fairly good condition seeing this was fresh water that didn't corrode items as in salt water. There was a certain amount of wear if the item was iron as opposed to brass, glass or crockery. Even the coins surface would vary depending on their proximity to another metal which showed the results by turning different colors.

In the beginning of our travels, we picked up almost everything that had even the remotest interest, from small items all the way up to a large auger measuring three feet long. We always had a float made from a small inner tube with a diver down flag attached.

As we would find large items we didn’t want to carry during the dive, we would tie them up the line one by one until it looked like laundry hanging above us all the way to the surface.As these large items diminished along with the desire to carry them home with us, we only carried a small zipper bag for coins and small items that deserved our attention.

After awhile I wanted to display some of the smaller interesting items in my family room so I purchase an old type case and mounted an artifact that would fit in each cubbyhole.

As you can see, by the enlarged photo on the left, a small pistol is located in this box along with a bullet that was found at another time. We had the pistol x-rayed to learn it was not loaded. I did also find a flint lock pistol, indicated on the right, but the brass barrel along with the mounting for the apparent wood handle was the only thing that survived. Other than the pistols the other items consist of clay pipes, pocket knives, spoons, keys, coins and other unidentified items.

The site, by the way, covers an area approximately 25 yards wide by over 200 yards long.

I mentioned also that there were square nails scattered all over the site. No matter where you dug there were square nails. They must have been carried in barrels as cargo as well as being part of what held the ship together. In the early days we also salvaged a number of these nails due to their age and interest. I had so many but I also wanted to display them according to size so I fixed some to a board to indicate the variety of sizes that were down there.

All in all, as I mentioned, we just couldn’t get enough of this area. Sometimes we would come home with 15 to 20 coins apiece while other times next to nothing but that didn’t diminish the draw.

There was quite a variety of coins to be found. There were American and Canadian large cents, three cent pieces, half dimes, dimes, quarters, half dollars, nothing later than 1858. Also in the mix was French, German and Chinese coins. My prize coin was an American gold dollar dated 1854.

All in all, over the years, I was fortunate to find over 350 coins. As mentioned earlier, most of the large cent pieces and any others, made of copper, displayed the widest variety of wear or corrosion depending on what they were in bed with during the time they spent on the bottom.

The silver coins fared much better and some looked like the day they went down. Keeping in mind that each coin also was probably in circulation before being committed to the deep so they would be worn from experiencing that in itself.

What was the wreck? No one ever found that out even though a lot of research was done. You would think that a catastrophe such as this would have made the papers of that time but no amount of research in the Buffalo News came up with anything. I even made a personal effort to send some artifacts such as luggage tags and keys, with company names on them, to the Buffalo Historical Society but they were not able to connect them with this particular wreck.

For this reason we were left with gut speculation of it being either a ship that carried immigrants or locals west on the lakes, rather than travel by land, or it might have been a ship owned by a circus company that had entertained people in Buffalo and then was on to a new location along the lake, maybe even Cleveland. We came up with the latter conclusion based on the amount of animal bones scattered among the wreckage, especially those of horses. We also found a number of horseshoes among the debris.

Finally, what fits both scenarios was the variety of coins we located which might have indicated the immigrant passengers or the fact that the circus was accepting any country’s money to enter the show.

After my family was relocated to Florida, by request of my job, my son Gary and I traveled back to Buffalo four times to dive for a week on the coin pile. We would either trailer a boat up or arrange for a boat captain to take us out once we flew up. The fever is still there, in both of us, after all these years.

If you feel lucky you may want to search the area yourself. The best time to go would be in early or mid August when the water is the warmest, low 70 degrees, and the winds are more favorable. Just ask the local dive shops "Where's the Coin Pile?" It's that well known in the area. In addition, you may want to contact the Buffalo Aqua Club who have a web site that can be found on line. Someone there should be able to answer any questions you might have as well as put you in touch with a boat for hire. If you have your own boat to trailer there all the better. Have fun and good luck!

George Landgrabe