Ponderosa Way: Sheep Ranch Road Traditional Cache
Ponderosa Way: Sheep Ranch Road
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This is the first of a series of caches exploring the remnants of Ponderosa Way.
It all started when I found Ponderosa Ways all over the place while caching in this area: Groveland, Murphys, San Andreas etc. We decided to look into this further and discovered that Ponderosa Way is actually an invisible federal road that stretches for 672 miles. While I won't be able to place caches all along the way due to Groundspeak restrictions, I'd like to make people more aware of this road locally. Much of it, in the Murphys area anyway, is gated and now private property. At the listed coordinates, you will see a green gate nearby: another section of Ponderosa Way.
The cache is a match container. Since this is a somewhat difficult area in which to get good coordinates, please us the hint if you need it. Please close the container securely to keep the contents dry and replace it well so it's not obvious.
This is not a "pretty" spot, nor is the container creative. This hide serves to point out the location of Ponderosa Way.
Please keep terrain rating into account. Do not go down into ravine, search through poison oak etc. Hide is within 2 feet of item mentioned in hint. As in all foothill areas, please be aware of slithery critters.
Here is more information about this interesting historical road:
Hidden amid the ridges and canyons along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada is what may be the longest invisible federal road in America. From its southern terminus on the banks of the Kern River, east of Bakersfield, Ponderosa Way stretches 672 miles north into Shasta County.
Conceived in the 1920s and built a decade later using the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps for manpower, the road was meant to be a graded gravel truck route, located more or less along the boundary between brush and the pine forests. The goal was to create a continuous firebreak along the boundary and, at the same time, give firefighters access to the area. The connection to the forest explains the name Ponderosa Way.
Where possible, the truck route followed existing roads, and that led to a confusing collection of named roads that are also Ponderosa Way.
While in some areas 70 years of neglect and erosion have all but obliterated the route, elsewhere it is possible to trace and even to traverse the venerable road.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Oruvaq gjb guerr-arrqyrq gerrf nggnpurq arne onfr bs bnx fueho.
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
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