NC man continues to dig up historic treasures on Topsail Island beaches post Florence

TOPSAIL ISLAND, NC (WECT) - Hurricane Florence tore through our area exactly two months ago today. The storm left behind widespread devastation that will go down in history but as we continue the clean up process, some people are finding pieces of history the storm helped to uncover.

Bradley Dixon has spent many days out on the beaches of Topsail Island with his trusty metal detector since the storm.

He's dug up items such as bullets, a gold ring among other jewelry, coins from the World War II era and projectiles.

Just this week he found the largest projectile he’s found so far at 27 lbs.

“The 40 mm, that was a pretty interesting moment," Dixon said. "Finding a projectile that’s that big, that was pretty exciting. But seeing that 27 lb projectile come out of the ground, that was extremely exciting.”

Dixon says he believes most of these items were here before Florence, however with the sand that was removed from the beaches due to the storm, it uncovered older sand which allowed him to find these treasures.

“I had heard of people going out after storms to look in the sands that got turned,” Dixon said. “But this is different. The sands actually got removed from the beaches and pulled out to sea and it just uncovered older sands from I guess an era about 80 years ago.”

It’s not just metal items Dixon has found. In the first few days after Florence he wanted to help clean up the beaches so he went out to pick up some trash that had washed ashore. In doing so Dixon ended up collecting piles trash he determined came all the way from Haiti.

In fact that is how Dixon decided to start metal detecting after the storm on the beach.

“While I was out picking up trash I started finding really nice shells and I just decided that I probably ought to take my metal detector out and try to see if anything had been uncovered,” Dixon said. “And I did and it was definitely worth while."

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