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Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Archaeology park named after ‘psychic’ who found artifacts
By John Bozzo | News-Journal Staff Writer
DAYTONA BEACH — Dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, Samuel Butts appears more like B.B. King than Indiana Jones, yet the professional musician fancies himself an archaeological psychic.
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Archaeological psychic |
“I would tell people what I was going to find and I would find it,” he said on a recent hot morning near the shade of a 250-year-old red cedar tree.
During the nearly 30-year avocation of exploring the site around that tree in the center of Daytona Beach, Butts has found artifacts providing clues to the area’s history from prehistoric to modern times.
Examples of his finds include a 10,000-year-old mastodon jaw, shells shaped into tools more than 6,000 years ago, pottery several thousand years old and the remains of a general store from the 1890s to 1920s.
Sparked by his efforts, an area where many artifacts were found will be preserved as an island in a new city stormwater-retention pond in a 29-acre park between South Street and Bellevue Avenue. City commissioners earlier this month named the park The Samuel Butts Youth Archaeological Park and Recreational Trail.
“Daytona Beach has a great treasure in its back yard that we almost lost,” said Ruth Trager, president of the Volusia Anthropological Society. “If it had not been for his (Butts’) efforts, all of these relics, all of these things from many time periods would have been lost.”
Butts, 60, is a musician who played lead guitar with various bands at local clubs and later toured Florida with gospel groups. Born in Winter Park, he was raised here as the 12th of 14 children of the late Bishop Eddie Butts Sr. and Jestine Butts. As he grew up and raised six children and seven grandchildren with his wife, Mae, Butts nurtured a passion as an amateur archaeologist.
“I was always looking for a village or something,” he said. “I felt there was one here.”
A breakthrough came in 1976, when he found some unusual shells on a vacant site between Bellevue Avenue and South Street in the heart of this urban city.
“Not having classical education, it was hard to recognize shell tools from shells,” he said. A trip to the City Island Library convinced him the shells were scraped and shaped into tools about 6,000 years ago.
Butts kept watch and explored the site over the years, registering it with the state Division of Historical Resources in 1994. He intensified his exploring as the city began to develop the retention pond.
“I was running between bulldozers and front-end loaders picking up things,” Butts said.
The park will be functional, recreational and historical. The pond provides the center of the city with flood relief. A recreational trail offers a scenic route for walkers and joggers, including a wooden walkway extending into the pond for fishing. Also planned are displays showing pictures of Butts and the artifacts he found, along with recordings of his voice at the push of a button explaining the site.
“I want to help students understand what some part of the community looked like in the past and how that has changed over time,” he said.
Butts wants to list the site on the Black Heritage Trail because it was once a plantation with slaves. He’s also hoping to get a building nearby to display the 612 artifacts certified by a state archaeological review.
The city spent $4.6 million to develop the park, using money from stormwater fees, as well as state and St. Johns River Water Management District grants.
“What the city has done is extraordinary,” Butts said as he surveyed the park that’s nearing completion. “It’s a miracle.”
Samuel Butts Jr., 25, joined his father on a recent morning at the site he knows from exploring with his father and siblings while growing up.
“We thought it was a game,” Samuel Jr. said.
The son recalled one day when his father announced he was going to find a tooth from a mammoth. He knew better than to doubt the archaeological psychic.
“He found it,” the son said. “They were digging up the area, and he picked it up from the teeth of a crane.”
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