A year after archaeologists uncovered what is now recognized as one Broward County's most significant historical sites, city officials are scrambling to find a way to protect it.

But it may be too late to preserve everything at South Beach Park, where 19th century musket balls, gun flints and uniform buttons may already have been dug up.

Beachcombers with metal detectors have bragged in Internet chat rooms about finding artifacts at the site, and archaeologists fear valuable history has already been lost to looters.

"They are not just stealing public property, but destroying the fabric of information from a signature site of the city," said archaeologist Bob Carr, who led the team that explored part of the site last year. "I think the city needs to step up to the plate."

City officials agree. Last week the commission directed City Manager Lee Feldman to protect that site and any others that are vulnerable.

"We need a policy, a plan, and probably to come up with an ordinance to address looting or pillaging," Mayor Jack Seiler said. "Who knows what's going to get uncovered next?"

Although there are two signs marking the area as the site of a fort built by Maj. William Lauderdale during the Second Seminole War, there are no signs warning visitors not to take any relics they may find.

Carr said such signs could be "a double-edged sword." While making it easier to prosecute looters, they might also entice people to dig there.

"It is not a mystery that there is a fort site there," Carr said. "A sign would just remind people that these cultural resources are public property, and taking them could be a felony."

Seiler said installing a security system using cameras, along with signs, could provide protection.

Carr, who runs the private Archaeological and Historical Conservancy Inc. of Davie, and county archaeologist Matthew DeFelice suggest the site may be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. That could make the use of metal detectors illegal.

Christopher Barfield, curator of the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society, said if parts of the site were uncovered and preserved for display, they could become part of an interactive tourist attraction.

Evidence of a prehistoric Tequesta settlement was discovered last year in the beach's south parking lot, near the pedestrian walkway to the Bahia Mar resort, as construction crews were planting trees. Archaeologists monitoring the project along A1A found pottery, conch shells and food waste from the tribe, such as turtle shells, fruit seeds and alligator scutes — the bones that make up the armor plate of the reptile's back.

The finds are thought to date from between 1100 and 1500.

On top of that, historians believe, was the city's third military fort, which lasted from 1839 to 1842.

What and how much has been pilfered from the site is unknown. But Carr, Barfield and DeFelice are convinced items have been removed.

During the dig, Barfield said, a man who works the area with a metal detector called him to say he had picked up several musket balls, gun flints and .45-caliber ammunition there.

"He asked what he should do with it," Barfield said. "I told him to bring the stuff by. Of course he never did."

Without any signage in the area, many who comb the beach for valuables may not know what to do with any relics they uncover.

"People will find things by happenstance," said DeFelice. "But you shouldn't be able to take artifacts any more than you can take a tree out of a public park."

John Wolfe, 66, a retiree from Connecticut, said he walks the beach almost every day, a metal detector in one hand, a combination digger and sieve in the other. He works the area about 30 yards from the tide, where sunbathers sit, in search of coins and jewelry, not prehistory.

His biggest discovery, he said, was a high school ring.

"I make about $1.50 a day," said the former data processor, opening a pouch where he deposits found coins and bottle caps. "And I don't go up there [by the dig site] because there is too much trash."

Wolfe said he would be sad to see metal detectors banned.

"It's my exercise," he said. "And it probably generates a fair amount of tourism. People come here to do this."

mwclary@tribune.com or 954-356-4465