The Electric Lighthouse "Mystery Object"


Chris Home Index Chat Arts Gary




!!! What is the history of this medallion tag? !!!

On October 30th of 1986 near Paris, Arkansas I found this stamped metal 'dog tag' under a boulder outcrop (three feet deep like a little cave beneath the overhanging rock. It looked like someone, long ago, had left it under there for some mysterious reason.

It is approximately 180 percent bigger than the original (depending upon the number of dots per-inch of your monitor).

The surface is encrustated along the edges and on the back which might indicate that it was in a campfire at one time and charcoal stuck to it but the encrustation is as hard as metal. There is a small flake which has fallen off in the recess of the number 5 which indicates that it might not be brass at all (as I would expect) for it is the shine of a silver-type metal. The tarnish is nearly black so it could be either very old silver, or nickle. My feeling of the object is that it was created by a blacksmith as each rounded corner equals no other corner as to the exact curvature. The slight irregularity of the hole indicates that it was probablly punched, then flattened more with a hammer.

Each number and letter seems to have been stamped one-by-one with a hammer and punch. The medalion is a hair less than 1/16th inch in thickness. The measurements in all three directions have all obviously been measured with a 1/16th inch ruler and not with metric rulers. Since the finished size is so close to being measured values, I would guess that it had been stamped out.

The number being 500 indicates that at least 500 other peole might have had one made for them, since it was found near the Ozark area of Arkansas, just how many groups would there have been that would recruit 500 people in the area?


MY OWN THOUGHT ON WHAT IT MIGHT BE

My thought is that it was a tag which was worn by either slaves or prisoners of a chain gang. I am thinking that someone had escaped and that they had cut it off and left it under the stone in case they might want, later, to return and say they had just gotten lost. I found it in dense forest behind a rock outcrop which was nearly like a little cliff. The cliff would have masked the person from what was then, probably a dirt road which went up and over a mountain, being at the 'summit' of that part of the mountain in that place.

Secondarilly, it might have been someone in some sort of W.P.A. project in the 1930's who placed the medalion under the overhang for unknown reasons.

Third, it was a dog tag from some war ( did they create dog tags during the Civil war? What did the dog tags of the First World War look like? )


The questions...

What kind of metal is it made from...

What year was it made?

Who made it, and for what purpose?

Were the initials CTC the person's name, or were they some cryptic abbreviation for some Conservation Corp, or something...

Why was it left underneath the rock, and by whom?


If I were to guess what year it was made, I'd probably guess sometime in the 1800s as the encrustation is so thick and the pataenation is thick. Does any of this ring a bell for anybody? If so, please leave me E-Mail .







After having read this depressing and discouraging text, if you still would like to try for the award, leave your URL at: