Woodside, The Center of it All! Mystery Cache
Spungebob: This cache was disappearing too much and I am no longer able to maintain it. I hope everyone who found it enjoyed it. :)
Woodside, The Center of it All!
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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I came to this place at all hours of the day, and it was just too busy to place a cache at, so the actual cache container is a block or so away. To get the coordinates of the actual container, you need to go to the posted coordinates. Use EXTREME caution when retrieving this cache, as you will need to cross “The Boulevard of Death!” (Queens Boulevard). Every part of this cache is accessible using the CROSS WALKS. Please remain in the crosswalks and wait for the green signal. New York drivers will not let pedestrians slow them down! Did I make my point? Please be careful!
Now, on to the cache. The above coordinates will take you to a marker on the ground. It states that this exact spot is the geographical center of N.Y.C. This means that if you took a flat map of N.Y.C. and put a pin underneath it at this point, it would remain perfectly balanced in the air. Who put this here I do not know, but in trying to find out, I also found out two other spots that claim to be the geographical center of N.Y.C., but they don’t have a marker!
The history of Woodside dates back to the mid 1600’s. The area was first claimed by the Dutch in 1609 when Henry Hudson discovered New York Harbor and it was named “New Netherland”. However, the first attempt to settle in this area was made by a group of English colonists from New England. They settled at the headwaters of Newtown creek just southwest of this spot in 1642. Within a year though, Native Americans raided and destroyed the settlement. In 1652 another group of English colonists, many directly from New England and others by way of Hempstead, attempted again at an inland site safe from raids – at what is now the intersection of Queens Boulevard and Broadway. People spoke of the community as the “new towne”, but it received the name “Middelburg”. The English took over New Netherland from the Dutch in 1664, and the next year some outlying plantations were added and the whole area was named “The New Towne”. In 1683 Long Island was divided into 3 counties: Queens, Kings, and Suffolk. Queens county had 5 townships: Newtown, Jamaica, Flushing, Oyster Bay, and Hempstead. Newtown comprised all of northwestern Queens. The Newtown overseers adopted a rule of connecting roads. It required owners of lots to stub and clear the road in front of their land “for a highway both for carts and cattle to pass”. When this section of colonial Newtown was named Woodside in the nineteenth century, it was a quiet, sparsely settled area, yet it had good connecting roadways to waterways on the west, north, and south sides of the town. Most of those early roads still exist today. (From “Woodside – A Historical Perspective 1652-1994, by Catherine Gregory.)
The cache is a magnetic keyholder, so bring a pen or pencil. To get the coordinates for the cache, you must get the following info from the marker. There is a big number written on the marker, with the letters NYC sandwiched in between. Don’t worry, it’s VERY obvious.
Substitute the letters NYC for:
0 for the North coordinate
4 for the West coordinate.
The coordinates for the cache are:
N 40 44.x0x
W 73 54.x4x
(Where x is the mystery number)
NO PICTURES OF THE MARKER!!!!!
Welcome to Woodside, center of it all!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Unir n frng!