Pouring & Cooling #502a Traditional Geocache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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One more cache in the Hammonton Creek WMA. This cache is very near Lavarock’s Amotol Speedway cache and is placed as an add-on to that cache. It is a testament to how the pines can, if allowed to do so, reclaim the land and convert it back to the wild with barely a trace of what once was there. In April of 1918 this tract of land looked very much like it does today, wild, overgrown and completely undeveloped. Within a span of only a few months, vast portions of this 6000 acre tract had been cleared, a huge munitions packing factory, plus an entire supporting town was built along with 50 miles of railroad track, 32 miles of road, water supply and sewage systems and its own power and steam generating plants. Over 1100 structures in all were erected and on August 2, 1918 just a few short months after the entire project was first started, the first shell was loaded with explosives and rolled off the assembly line at The Atlantic Loading Company’s Plant to support the efforts of American forces fighting WWI in Germany. Only two years later production was halted and by 1923 nearly all of it was gone. Everything, including the power lines and utility poles was dismantled and sold for scrap. About the only things left standing were the concrete foundations of a few storage buildings and the fortified concrete walls of the factory buildings where the high explosives were actually poured into the heated empty shell casings and allowed to cool before being moved on to the next building. This cache is hidden near what remains of pouring and cooling building #502a where 6-inch shells were filled with a 50/50 mix of TNT and ammonium nitrate. The construction and layout of the building looks a bit odd with lots of thick concrete. This was done to direct the force of any accidental explosions more ‘up’ instead of ‘out’ thereby helping to protect the integrity of the surrounding plant buildings. It is not necessary to go inside the structure or near any of the standing walls to retrieve the cache. The hide is not what I’d call typical piney and may require a well trained cacher-eye to find. You should definitely go after Lava’s Amotol Speedway cache when doing this one if you haven’t already as the remains of an ammonium nitrate offloading/storage facility can be seen near it. This WMA also contains several other fine caches that are worth the trip. Have fun, be safe, always know your surroundings and wear blaze orange in season.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Guvatf ner abg nf gurl nccrne. Jung yvrf orarngu vf vafvqr jung jnfa’g urer.