History: This cache was placed as a reminder of
Kodak's history in the area. In 1965, Eastman Kodak Company
purchased 600 Acres of land in the Town of Gates to construct what
would be known as the Elmgrove Complex. Construction started in
1966, with the first building being occupied in 1967.
By 1982, Elmgrove consisted of 11 buildings, employed 18,000
people, and had 11,000 parking spaces with 2,200 more under
construction. Peak employment reached 20,000, but by 1999 Kodak
made the decision to sell the complex for $30 million dollars. In
2000, the site consisted of 17 buildings, and 5.1 million square
feet of space. Source: Rochester D and C.
At its peak the facility handled its own water, electricity,
food service, and even a bank. It began as a camera manufacturing
facility, expanding later into a facility of blood analyzers,
photocopiers, tool and die work, and one time use cameras (OTUCs).
Currently, approximately 700,000 square feet of space is being
utilized, and 1 million more is occupied by Hiedelberg. Source:
Rochester D and C.
The Cache: The cache itself is located in a small
wooded area on the campus of Rochester Tech Park (RTP). There is a
lightly used parking lot nearby, and your walk should actually take
you accross a field that used to be an older parking lot. There are
remnants of that parking lot in the area. That lot was covered with
topsoil and is now a grassy field. When it gets really hot and dry
in the summer, you can see this field is drier and browner than the
surrounding area, presumably because they didn't tear up all the
ballast from the parking area.
Final: There are some toys, some trade items, and some
travel bugs to start things out. As in the cache name, there is a
one time use camera for you to take a picture of yourself at the
cache site. Congratulations to Halegang for the First To Find on
this cache.
Feel free to share some stories about Elmgrove in you logs. Did
you work here? Did your parents? What division where you in?