Geophysical Sensing in Patterson Park

My Searching for the War of 1812 in Patterson Park project is finally under way in Baltimore. The first part of the fieldwork is geophysical sensing, using magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar to search for traces of the 1814 earthworks, thrown up during the British attack on the city. I am hoping to be in the Baltimore Sun tomorrow; we had a reporter and photographer on site today.

You can see the remains of the earthworks in this photograph; the Pagoda was built within one of the bastions. As Johns Hopkins of Baltimore Heritage (our client) explained to the Sun yesterday, for at least a hundred years this spot was maintained as a memorial to the battle and the defense of the city. The cannons were set up for the centennial in 1914. But since then the association of the park with the battle has been broken as waves of immigrants have passed through the neighborhood -- Italians, Hispanics, gentrifying whites -- and people in the neighborhood no longer think of Patterson Park as having anything to do with the war or the Star Spangled Banner. One of the main goals of this project is to make people in the city and the neighborhood aware of the connection again.

The technical part of our job is to find the remains of the earthworks, map them, and dig out sections to find out what is in them. We are starting with the visible earthworks around the Pagoda, hoping that these are actually the remains of the originals and not later reconstructions. This morning we were using ground-penetrating radar in an attempt to map cross-sections of the buried earthworks. That's our geophysical expert, Dr. Tim Horsley, with his GPR unit above.

Yesterday in the snow we were trying magnetometry, a different technique. Sadly, where there isn't metal above ground there is metal below ground, so it was hard to find the weak magnetic signature of the 1814 trench amidst the strong signatures of cannons and electrical lines. We may have better luck farther away from the Pagoda.

Dr. Tim with his magnetometer.

The digging part of the project starts on April 15 and runs for four weeks. We will be working Tuesday through Saturday and we welcome volunteers and visitors; more information for volunteers at this page, set up by Baltimore Heritage.