What the trees and Mother Nature are telling us.

@kateinpdx It's entierly possible someone has been prospecting at some point. I don't know much about geology and if there is anything potentially valuable there. I have found no traces of anything prospecting like though, but one related theory I have is that the valley might have been used as a route to transport iron from inland to the coast. There was a big iron industry deeper inland 8-1200 years ago, extracting iron from bogs before sending it off to the sea for further transport by ship. Because iron is heavy they chose the shortest route, which is not this one. I have a theory this might have been used as an alternativ route though. The iron was valuable and the transport must have been dangerous.