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Saturday, September 4, 1999
Old safe surfaces again to tantalize road workers
By Ronald Williamson | News-Journal Staff Writer
DELAND — There's not much buried treasure in downtown DeLand. Which is no surprise. None of the great treasure maps mark West Volusia with an X.
Still, a few fellows got excited last week when they found an old safe buried under Woodland Boulevard. For months, streetscape workers have been finding coins and other small treasures in trenches and holes they're digging.
It wasn't too far-fetched to think an old safe might be full of coins.
"Everybody's eyes lit up about that big," said Steve Ross, stretching his thumb and middle finger apart. "The contractor got pretty excited. He thought, Hey, maybe this is my retirement.'"
Digging up downtown is Ross' job. He's the city's project manager for the $2.5 million reconstruction of boulevard intersections, sidewalks and underground utilities. The project, which cuts through the heart of a historic district, is to be finished in November.
The last time there was this much digging on the boulevard was 1940, when concrete replaced the bricks. Most of that digging was in the street. Today, it's in the intersections and relatively undisturbed soil along the street's edges.
Workers have found a few old bottles and picked up lots of coins of many denominations, said Ross. Quite a few coins were found near the front of SouthTrust Bank, the site of a 19th-century hotel.
The face value of coins found on the job might amount to $10, said Ross, although the market value is higher. Workers have found four or five silver dollars.
Hopes of minor treasures have a few citizens searching the city job site after hours for coins and other artifacts. Some use metal detectors, and have found money, but Ross has no idea how much.
This historic dig is pretty much a finders, keepers kind of situation.
"I think the oldest silver dollar found was 1869," said Ross. "Another was 1892. Some of the fellows found some old Indian heads like I'd never seen before. ... They were way old."
One worker found a silver dollar and took it to a coin shop. In good condition, it might have been worth $1,500, said Ross, but the shop owner only offered $100.
Word of such finds travels quickly among workers, so it didn't take long for everyone to know that Ron Johnston had uncovered a safe.
The Port Orange contractor's backhoe hit the metal box three or four feet under the boulevard at Rich Avenue. Johnston jumped in the hole, and scraped away enough sand to know they had found a big safe, about 3 feet square.
Hopes soared, but only momentarily. When the safe was lifted out of the hole, the door was gone. It held only sand.
"The first thing I thought of was Jesse James had robbed a bank in downtown DeLand," said Johnston. "It looked like somebody blew the safe up. The hinges were broken off."
No one knew it, but it was the second time this century the old safe had spread excitement through boulevard work crews.
In July 1940, workers uncovered the same safe at Rich Avenue. They'd been finding old coins, too, so the safe was an exciting find until they saw the door missing and found it full of sand.
Old-timers were asked about it, according to a local newspaper story, but no one had a clue about how a safe got to be buried under the boulevard.
Instead of hauling it off, workers threw it back in the hole, and paved the boulevard right over it. The safe was forgotten until Johnston uncovered it and got everybody all excited again.
It's kind of like road workers in the early 1900s played a practical joke on road workers in 1940, and they, in turn, played the same darned joke on workers in 1999.
Late this week, no one could find the old safe, and Ross wasn't sure what happened to it. Some say it was hauled off, but others think the old buried safe joke is being played again, this time on road workers of the 21st century.
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