Posted 2 months ago
Grantcody
(1 item)
Found these on my property in northern Minnesota. Super cool after finding out what they were and not just scrap.
WW1 corkscrew fence posts | ||
| Military and Wartime1 of 7283 |  |  |
WW1 corkscrew fence posts | ||
| Military and Wartime1 of 7283 | | |
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Posted 2 months ago
Grantcody
(1 item)
Found these on my property in northern Minnesota. Super cool after finding out what they were and not just scrap.
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Grantcody, Cool. :-)
I hadda look those up:
*snip*
In the December 2015 issue of Farm Collector, an article on the Vaughn post auger suggested that the U.S. Cavalry used the augers to create temporary horse corrals on the Great Plains. More likely, the fence posts with the corkscrew-style design are surplus World War I barbed wire anchor posts.
These posts were set in no-man’s land, the region between the opposing armies’ trenches, with barbed wire strung through the loops forming an entanglement to slow the advancing enemy. The barbed wire barriers were set up by wiring parties that ventured out under cover of darkness. The noise of hammering a traditional fence post into the ground was found to draw the enemy’s attention, so screwing these posts into the ground was much quieter and therefore safer.
*snip*
https://www.farmcollector.com/field-notes/screwy-fence-posts-zmnz16aprzhur/
Cool find! Time to break out the metal detectors
I am amazed that Keramikos found these, he is a lifesaver at times. I hope you had the decency to thank him !!~
PhilDMorris, No thanks needed. :-)
Grantcody posted just enough information in the title to pique my curiousity. I didn't know what was special about WWI corkscrew fence posts, so I had to investigate a bit.
I decided that if I hadn't previously known what was special about WWI corkscrew fence posts, there might be others in that same boat, so I linked what I'd found with an excerpt.
I've learned so much from Collectors Weekly Show & Tell.
Thanks for all that info keramikos! I too went down a rabbit hole when I found them. I found a total of 75 posts that the previous owners had used as legitimate fence posts.
I did break out a metal detector but there’s so much other garbage on the property that I’m not finding anything terribly interesting. I have found some glass bottles from the 40’s-70’s but other than that just metal cans and such. Does anyone have recommendations on what to do with the posts? They’re just sitting at this point and I have no idea what to do with them.
Grantcody, You are very welcome. I found it an enjoyable rabbit hole. :-)
As to what you should do with the posts, it depends on how many of them you found.
However, you might consider mounting one as a display with an explanation of what it is, and the history of the WWI corkscrew fence post. I'd hate to think that somebody else might come into possession of them some day, be ignorant of what they are, and throw them in the trash.
Keramikos, there are 75 posts. And I live on an acreage in a small town in northern Minnesota so idk how I’d go about doing a display.
Well, worth preserving the best examples. Might even be interest in them on auction sites, i.e., ebay, etsy, etc.
On ebay:
https://tinyurl.com/439wn3mt
Grantcody:
"Keramikos, there are 75 posts. And I live on an acreage in a small town in northern Minnesota so idk how I’d go about doing a display."
Sorry, I misread your earlier comment. Seventy-five of those corkscrew posts is quite a bit.
As kwqd suggested, preserving the best samples is worthwhile, and selling some of the posts is another idea.