The Coso Artifact: How a Chance Discovery in California in 1961 Called Into Question the Course of Human History

 On February 13, 1961 three small business owners: Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell--artisans by trade who specialize in the crafting of handmade jewelry and sell their creations at a local boutique--are out in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near the Nevada border in western California scouring the arid countryside looking for interesting mineral specimens known as ‘geodes’.

A ‘geode’ in geologic terms is defined as a: Geological secondary formation within sedimentary or volcanic rocks.  In layman's terms a geode is typically a hollowed out rock usually in the shape of a sphere, or cylinder, with some sort of mineral deposit at the center.  Usually these mineral deposits are quite colorful, and often they are very beautiful which is why geodes are something that three small business owners specializing in handmade jewelry would be out scouring a California hillside in search of in the first place.

As it was, on that fateful day of February 13, 1961, artisans Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell unwittingly stumbled upon something that was much more than an eye-catching geode.  What these three found in the hills of California on that day just over sixty years ago may (emphasis here definitely on the word may) have radically altered our view regarding the course of human history forever.

Lane, Maxey and Mikesell owned a boutique called the LM & V Rockhounds Gem and Gift Shop in the small town of Olancha, California.  Olancha is a rather desolate place that’s really not all that far from Death Valley.  Today it’s home to a gas station, a trailer park, a motel and several campgrounds.  Olancha’s claim to fame, if the small desert town could be said to have one, is that it sits on the outskirts of the government protected Coso Range Wilderness Area.

The Coso Range Wilderness Area is a picturesque landscape of thousands of acres of volcanic valleys, desert scenery and countless caves with rock paintings called petroglyphs (some of the oldest forms of artistic human expression) that is visited by thousands of tourists and nature lovers each year.

It was the popularity of the Coso Range Wilderness area that allowed LM & V Rockhounds Gem and Gift Shop to conduct a thriving business back in the 1950’s and 60’s.

 While out scouring the countryside for geodes, at a spot in the Coso Range Wilderness Area itself about six miles north of downtown Olancha, and at an elevation of approximately 4,500 feet on February 13, 1961 Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey and Mike Mikesell literally stumbled upon, since it was said that the object was found simply lying atop the sandy soil, what forever after would be called “The Coso Artifact” or more specifically what archaeologists and historians have now classified as, “The Coso Out-of-Place Artifact”.

In simple terms an ‘Out-of-Place Artifact’ or OOPArt is any finding of historical, archaeological or paleontological importance that is made in an unusual context (out of place and time period) which challenges, or may appear to challenge, conventionally agreed upon historical chronology.

Coso Range Wilderness Area

In the case of the alleged Coso Artifact the actual out-of -place discovery occurred the day after the trio first stumbled upon the interesting looking geode in the California countryside.

It was on that day, February 14, 1961 that Mike Mikesell ruined a diamond saw blade while cutting through the stone in the stockroom of the gift shop.  What Mikesell discovered inside the geode was not a soft colorful mineral like the kind he had expected, but rather he discovered what appeared to be a porcelain wrapped steel cylinder inside the rock itself.

Not only that, but Mikessell noted that the outer layer of stone appeared to be encrusted in fossilized sea shells and that it seemed as if an iron nail and washer were also sticking out of one side of the rock.

Mikesell then took this remarkable artifact to his three colleagues who all marveled at its oddity and reportedly called in a local geologist to investigate what it might be.

Virginia Maxey, one of the Coso Artifact’s original discoverers would later state that although this particular geologist who first examined the stone would refuse to comment on what the artifact might actually be, he did emphatically state after looking at the fossilized seashells on the surface of the artifact that such a rock would have taken at least 500,000 years to form.

After this unnamed geologist looked at the strange artifact a second investigation was launched a few years later into what this mysterious object could be.  This second investigation was conducted by scientist and author Ron Calais.  Calais was the first person allowed to take photographs and x-rays of the Coso Artifact and his investigations revealed some interesting findings.  Upon examination, Calais’ photographs and x-rays revealed what many believed to be the existence of metal springs within the artifact or even evidence of some type of corroded metal threading within inner workings of the metal cylinder encased in the stone of the Coso Artifact.  This new evidence generated a flurry of interest in the Coso Artifact as one of history’s most profound out-of-place artifacts since it seemed to represent some form of 500,000 year old advanced machinery.

However, despite the seemingly profound nature of Ron Calais’ investigation back in 1968, it should be noted that Calais himself is at best a sort of “pseudo-scientist” who is most well known for authoring books with noted UFOlogist Brad Steiger such as Mysteries of Time and Space (1974) and Mysteries of Animal Intelligence (1995).  Additionally, despite having done prolific research on out-of-place artifacts, and despite being a widely published author, Ron Calais is also a well known supporter of creationism and a devout creationist.

I won’t delve into the creationist argument in general here since it is beyond the scope of this article, and I neither want to favor or disfavor any particular belief system when it comes to reporting on the Coso Artifact,  but I will simply state that those who believe in human existence by Intelligent Design, have over the course of the last six decades, been the most ardent supporters of the Coso Artifact as being a genuine “Out-of-Place” historical artifact that represents the existence of a much more technologically advanced human civilization that existed much earlier than previously thought.

As it was, for nearly three decades, almost no one at all was permitted to see the Coso Artifact.  In fact, after 1969 it was believed that only Wallace Lane, one of the artifact’s original discoverers had access to it and that he kept it on display in his home and only showed it to his closest personal friends and family despite having it always up for sale at a purported asking price of $25,000.

In 1999 scientists in California launched a nationwide search to find any of the three original discoverers of the Coso Artifact, but at the turn of the 21st century it was believed that both Mike Mikesell and Wallace Lane had already passed away, while Virginia Maxey though still alive, steadfastly refused to comment at all to anyone regarding her part in the discovery of the Coso Artifact.

It was believed that the Coso Artifact, which had been the object of so much press and speculation back in the 1960’s had either been lost forever, or intentionally destroyed--until April of 2018 that is.

On April 12, 2018 a member of Wallace Lane’s family reached out to author and skeptic Pierre Stromberg and arranged for Mr. Stromberg along with Paul Heinrich a geologist from the University of Washingtonto be the first outside experts to personally examine and photograph the Coso Artifact in nearly forty years.

During the 1990’s using the old photographs and X-Rays of the Coso Artifact, as well as documentary evidence, Stromberg and his fellow University of Washington Professor Paul Heinrich had published an article which theorized that the so-called “Corso Artifact” was not a geode at all, but rather, something called a concretion.

A concretion, in scientific terms, is a hard solid mass of a sedimentary nature that forms in layers around an object, such as most often takes place in objects that are submerged underwater for extended periods of time.  The thing about concretions, unlike geodes, is that concretions can form under the right conditions within several decades instead of tens of thousands of years.

If the Coso artifact is, in fact, an example of a concretion rather than a geode, then its metallic compositions no longer necessarily make it an “Out-of-Place” historical artifact.

Professor Heinrich and his colleague Pierre Stromberg took their speculation a step further and asserted that the Coso Artifact was a twentieth century automobile spark plug.  

After contacting the Spark Plug Collectors of America, Stromberg and Heinrich, identified the Coso Artifact as a Champion brand spark plug most commonly used in Model T and Model A Ford automobiles during the 1920’s.  Stromberg and Heinrich theorized that the spark plug had become encrusted by a concretion composed mostly of iron oxide as it sat on the ground and rusted over time.

1920's Ad for Champion Spark Plugs

On April 12, 2018 Pierre Stromberg was granted an opportunity by members of Wallace Lane’s family to examine the Coso Artifact first hand along with other members of the University of Washington’s Geology Department and their investigation once again confirmed the spark plug concretion theory that Heinrich and Stromberg had first espoused nearly two decades ago.

Interestingly, in 2018 the investigative team from the University of Washington asserted that they could find no evidence of fossilized sea shells dating back perhaps half a million years on the outside of the Coso Artifact as had been previously claimed.

Today, despite the persuasive evidence of the spark plug concretion theory which would place the age of the Coso Artifact at about one hundred years, many still cling to the validity of the Coso Artifact as a so-called Out-of-Place historical artifact which predates the known dawn of human civilization.

Some assert that the Coso Artifact is proof of the lost continent of Atlantis, or proof that extraterrestrials, ancient aliens if you will, played some kind of role in the development of mankind.  Some say that the Coso Artifact is irrefutable proof of human time travelers from the distant future.

The Coso Artifact is, probably, no more than an automobile spark plug from the 1920’s encrusted in decades worth of oxidized iron, but it is nice wonder if, the Coso Artifact and others like it from around the world, perhaps calls into question all that we as a civilization think we know about our own history.