Quite a few years ago, Merritton was home to
various industries along side the First & Second Welland Canals
that used to run through this area. On this property was a rather
large building which used to be a Cotton Mill, a Rubber Company,
storage space for Domtar and now a Steakhouse. All that remains
today is the Annex which is only 1/3 of the entire building that
used to stand here, a fire in the 1960's gutted the office building
portion which was then levelled and left as a vacant lot. Today you
can see the foundation of the office building which is on the East
side of the Annex. I took a walk around the perimeter one day and
found old glass bottles (from the early 1900's), and a few broken
china tea cups. Most of these findings were buried under 3 inches
of hard clay which made me believe they were actually old remnants
that used to be used in the office building and not someone's
garbage that was carelessly disposed of.
Behind the Annex is the route of the Second
Welland Canal, this section was called "Neptune's Staircase" as it
was the stair way up and down the escarpment. Also located in this
area were several Weirs, ponds and bridges. Existing roads (Hartzel
Rd & Glendale Ave) can also be seen in the map from 1868, the
positions of these roads have changed very little if at all in over
140 years.
The cache is located in the area by Lock 15 of
the Second Welland Canal. Crossing over this Lock is a bridge which
replaced a swing bridge that was built when the Canal was built. As
the Canal was no longer used for boat traffic the swing bridge was
replaced by a permanent concrete bridge which is what you will see
when you get to the cache site. The Lock itself was filled in with
soil leaving only half of the Lock walls visible, the other half of
the Lock is completely buried. You can still see the path the road
going through here took, but since July 2007, it has been broken up
and will probably be sodded over eventually.
Additional notes about the Cache:
- No pen / pencil in the cache - bring your own.
- No trading items in the cache, just a log book (there is room
for small items though).
- High traffic area (cars & pedestrian) - USE
STEALTH!
- Please re-hide the cache exactly where you found it.
Thanks & enjoy!
