Jan Wesner Childs
Record low water levels in the Mississippi River at Memphis are giving way to rocky banks scattered with Civil War relics.
"You can actually see on the shoreline the different levels where the river’s been steadily dropping and it’s been cutting out sand," Riley Bryant, who recently found several treasures there, said in an interview Wednesday. "So there’s kind of shelves of clay and sand going down to the water’s edge."
Bryant, known on social media as an avid relic hunter, picked up several pieces, including bullets and a cartridge box plate, under the Interstate 55 bridge between Tennessee and Arkansas. He plans to search for more as long as the water levels allow.
"There’s all these artifacts just kind of laying along there that have been in the water for the last 160 years," he said.
(MORE: Dredges Working Overtime On Mississippi River)
The bridge sits near what was once Fort Pickering, decommissioned and demolished in 1866. It served as both a Confederate outpost and a Union garrison at different points during the Civil War.
The area is on a section of the Mississippi that's hit record lows in recent weeks because of drought and a lack of rainfall this year in areas that feed the river.
The low water levels are hampering shipping on the 2,350-mile-long river, leaving barges idle and vessels running aground. There are also fears that local water supplies could be contaminated and prices will rise for food and steel.
(MORE: Mississippi River Looks More Like Creek)
But for treasure hunters like Bryant, it's an opportunity.
"I was walking down there looking for anything that I could find - old glass, pottery, stuff like that," he said.
That's when he stumbled upon the cartridge box plate, "laying there plain as day."
It's a discovery that at least one historian says is rare.
"It's hard to find a box plate that's that undamaged," Bill Shaner, 63, a Civil War historian and lifelong Memphis resident, told ABC News. "I couldn't believe it was sticking up in the rocks like that."
(MORE: Plummeting Mississippi River Levels Reveal Sunken Ship)
Bryant felt the same way.
"It’s difficult to describe the feeling of seeing something like that laying on the ground, for a history buff at least," he said. "To find one laying there, just like that, washed out by the river was an incredible experience."
He's encouraging others to go out and hunt for lost treasures along the river bank, with a reminder to be careful on slippery shorelines and to stay out of the water itself.
"There’s a narrow window of opportunity for us to get down there and find stuff like that," Bryant said. "These artifacts that we’ve yet to find could be lost into the channel for the rest of eternity if someone doesn't go down there and pick them up."
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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