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This cache is NEW and IMPROVED. If you have done this in the past, the end point is now moved to entirely different area that will give you a greater appreciation for the immense glacial water flow through this area 12,000 years ago. I have re-done the code for the new coordinates. Happy caching!
Imagine yourself standing on this site 12,000 years ago. You are completely alone, no other humans ever having been here before. Below your feet is a torrent of water flowing directly north into a vast, cold fresh water sea stretching to the horizon. If it is a clear day, you can see in the distance a horizontal white band between the sky and sea. Behind you is another vast watery expanse extending to the southern horizon. The dry land you stand on goes east and west in a wide rocky line blocking the southern sea from the northern.
Before this time, the glacial ice sheets covered the land from Hudson’s Bay to Pennsylvania. As the two-mile high glacial sheet retreated northward, the land below, relieved of its ice burden, rose upward exposing higher patches of land that formed islands and archipelagos punctuating the vast glacial lakes bordering the ice sheet.
Now imagine immense forces below the state of Michigan, raising it upward several hundred feet, tilting upward the layers of rock surrounding it millions of years ago. You are standing on a long stretch of this upwardly tilted rock extending into what is now New York State and known as the Niagara Escarpment. The plain stretching to the north was the bed of Lake Iroquois, the glacial water blocked by the ice sheet that would have been visible as a horizontal white band on the horizon to the north. Behind you, to the south, would have been the water of Lake Tonawanda, extending from what is today Lake Erie, to about the area of Rochester. The river bed on which you stand drained the water from Lake Tonawanda northward into Lake Iroquois 12,000 years ago.
We know of four other locations that drained water from Lake Tonawanda to Lake Iroquois – at Holley, Medina, Gasport, and Lewiston, NY. Due to a slight upward trend in the Niagara Escarpment from west to east (the west end is lower in Lewiston), the easternmost outlets to Lake Iroquois eventually dried up as Lake Tonawanda gradually shrunk to its present size in what is now Lake Erie. The Lewiston drainage persisted, gradually eroding southward forming the Niagara Gorge of today. Had the Lockport gorge on which you stand persisted, it would also have eroded southward forming a similar immense gorge. See the accompanying photo to see the topo map for this spot.
When the autumn leaves have dropped, you can see the Lockport gorge more clearly. To your left and down into the gorge is ‘The Gulf’ in which Gulf Wilderness Park is located and where several fun caches are hidden. Enjoy this geologically significant spot and let your mind travel back 12,000 years. Any comments or additions from those who are geologically knowledgeable would be appreciated.
To find the coordinates for the cache site, please answer the following questions with corresponding code numbers:
1. Dudley Donnelly was appointed Colonel on May 18, 186X. (If you’re standing here, you’ll know who Dudley was.)
2. He was killed at the Battle of Cedar Mountain on August 9, 186Y.
The final cache is located at: North 43 X0 74X
West 78 43 Y0X
Good luck. Have fun!
Mud Master
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Vagb gur Thys, 50 srrg bss genvy, va fgbar jnyy.