Oakey Doakey Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This cache was released for “The Great Northern Tier Geocaching Tournament 2007 – North Quabbin Event it is now available for any Geocachers who wishes to visit the cache after the event. Parking Location N 42 27.604 - W 072 10.938
Property Description 439 acres | Established 1983
The East Branch of the Swift River links all three tracts of Swift River Reservation. The Nichewaug Tract includes extensive rocky ledges, a moist ravine, open fields, a beaver-dammed swamp, vernal pools, riverside habitat, and forest edges along woods roads. These habitats support many small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, and birds.
In the late eighteenth century, much of the Reservation was cleared for farms that conducted small-scale agriculture, subsistence livestock grazing, and fuel wood collection. In the nineteenth century, population growth and new local industries (saw and wool mills, a box company, a tannery, and a hat company) placed greater demand on the area's natural resources. The forest was largely cut, sparing trees only on steep, rocky hillsides, on ledges, and in wetlands.
Several reclaimed fields in the Slab City Tract re-create the open setting around the Avery Williams farmstead as it may have appeared around 1890. After farm abandonment in the early twentieth century, the forest returned only to be decimated by a major hurricane in 1938. Today most of the Reservation's white pine and mixed hardwood forest date to this hurricane and its associated cleanup.
Trails
7 miles of trails and woods roads. Moderate hiking, strenuous in places.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)