"Blow the whistle, Buck," shouted Sgt. Naughton. Every one of the 600 men on the night shift at Split Rock's TNT plant knew it was the signal for fire. It was the night of Tuesday, July 2, 1918; the country was at war to end wars.
from "The Night the Rock Blew Up" by Jasena Foley, Onondaga Town Historian, c.1973
Our Ghost - If you are brave enough to be up at Split Rock towards sunset, you just may see The Ghost of one of the 50 men killed that terrible night when 2000 pounds of TNT lit up the Syracuse skies. He'll be running along the high ridge behind the Rock Crusher or atop the Crusher istelf, carrying a red signal lantern (tho' some have seen a red fire bucket), he's a desperate man in deperate times, for a raging fire has just broken out in TNT Building #1...
His Story - The Ghost is quite possibly one of the "Unidentifiable Fifteen", for the TNT blast was so terrible that 15 of the 50 men killed vanished without a trace, they were never seen again. The great fire and ensuing explosion in TNT Building #1 was only the beginning of that terror-filled night. The initial blast threw men hundreds of feet into the fiery skies, along with giant chunks of concrete, steel and machinery. The survivors below were pelted and crushed by the falling debris, iron girders weighing hundreds of pounds came crashing to the ground. Great iron vats, filled with thousands of gallons of deadly nitric and picric acid, became superheated by the flames and shot like rockets into the sky...those not killed by flames or crushed to death were now caught in a deadly shower of flaming acid. And if all that weren't enough, as the fires raged and more explosions rocked the quarry a deadly noxious fog had formed from all the burning chemicals and it began to pour forth, asphyxiating those unlucky enought to be caught in it's path...
In spite of this Wrath-of-God onslaught the munitions workers were faced with, the majority of them held to their posts and valiantly battled the fire. If the fire had been allowed to spread across The Gulf to the 804,000 pounds of TNT in storage in the area known as "Canada" (current home of the McCool Family Dynasty!) the firestorm would have destroyed the entire city of Syracuse. Just 2 years earlier a similar munitions fire had completely leveled the city of Halifax.
Our cache - It's a large ammo can filled with goodies and while you needn't do to much bushwacking to get to it, it is a good ways into the old quarry. Parking is available at the western-most end of Onondaga Blvd., N 43'01.487 W 76' 14.558. The cache's coordinates bring you to the Rock Crusher and from there you must find your second set of waypoints. It's a fun hike in, so take your time along the easily visible trails and enjoy all the many ruins there are to see in this curious and inspiring area.
Please be sure to check out nearby cache "The Rock" by K9 Cachers, more spooky and historical fun in Split Rock!