Parking is available at either end of the trail. Street parking is permitted on both sides of Lincoln Avenue which will put you close to 2-3 caches on the north end of the trail. Parking in the UMOS lot at Chase Avenue and Rosedale Avenue will put you close to 3 caches on the west end of the trail. The distance from cache 1 to cache 6 is about .6 mile. Bike, hike, or roller skate your way to each hide..
When I was 2 or 3 years old, my uncle Chet, called me FURF. No one in my family remembers why, probably my mispronunciation of some word or another, but for whatever reason, the nickname stuck. Whenever we reminisce about days of yore, the name FURF is sure to be resurrected. It therefore seems appropriate to use that nickname for this series of caches as I reminisce about the 1950’s and the fun times I had within a stone’s throw of this new bike trail.
Memory 5 is about railroad tracks in general. When I was a kid, there were tracks everywhere. Tracks for the trolleys which were being phased out in the 1950’s, tracks for the North Shore line which paralleled 6th street from downtown Milwaukee all the way to Chicago, and railroad tracks all over the place. Back then, the interstate system was just under construction. Most goods got from point A to point B via train. Railroad tracks were a kid’s dream and a parent’s nightmare. We lived near a siding of the Milwaukee Road Railroad which served an ice house and a few factories like the Heil Company and Nordberg Manufacturing. We were constantly warned not to play around the railroad tracks, but the traffic on this siding was infrequent at best, so we often bowed to peer pressure to join our friends in their explorations of the rail system. I never scaled a sided freight car, but some of my best friends were climbers. This quiet siding was an ideal place for those who utilized the rails for free travel across our state to spend a few nights of rest and relaxation. The “hobo” camp was off limits to all the neighborhood kids, so of course, we would sneak through the woods to get a glimpse of these scruffy men as they prepared their meals over an open campfire. Look to the south toward that trestle across Chase Avenue. Just to the left was the site of my grandparent’s home. Railroad tracks marked the west end of their backyard. Every half hour or so, a train would rumble past their property, rattling every loose object in their home. This was startling to a young visiting grandson, but went completely unnoticed by both of my grandparents. The tracks did provide a playground for ourselves and our cousins, with many a penny squished flat by a passing freight train.
From what I could determine, the tracks upon which this trail is built, was just a loop off the main line from downtown going west through West Allis before joining up with another main line around 76th Street and Greenfield Avenue. There was a branch that went south to 20th Street and Morgan Avenue ending at A1 Salvage. Another branch went north along 43rd Street to deliver barley to the grain elevators when Milwaukee was the beer capital of the world.
Permission to place this cache has been granted by Michael Loughran, Public Works Coordination Manager.