How
many times have you driven on country roads and seen a small
collections of houses and buildings? Have you ever thought what
could've been there before your time? Well, there is a good chance
that the collection of houses could have once been a thriving
village that housed an entire population. It had businesses,
churches, streets, and a meeting place, but no longer does. In
Michigan, there are thousands of towns like these that existed and
died for a variety of reasons!
Here
is where the challenge lies. The goal is to go out in the great
state of Michigan and find caches that are either in or located
near ghost towns!
Twenty caches is the magic number to
complete this challenge!
What is
the definition of a ghost town for this
challenge?
- Any once flourishing
American community that has been abandoned, generally for economic
reasons. While most of the towns have little or no population, they
often contain old buildings. Some contain nothing of their original
appearance!
- Towns that have a
population of less than two hundred are acceptable.
- You will be surprised
how many small collections of buildings are ghost towns. Doing some
research on
Ghosttowns.com
or looking at a detailed
recreational UniversalMap Michigan Travel Atlas might help you
find them.
- Areas that used to be
towns, but got swallowed up by a growing city (like Delta near
Lansing or Isabella City near Mt. Pleasant) are also acceptable.
Bay City is made of several lost towns!
What cache
types are acceptable?
![]()
![]()
* Unlike many other
challenges, virtuals are popular for ghost town caches and are
acceptable. For Letterboxes, Multis, and Mystery caches, the cache
description has to mention being in or near a ghost town to be
accepted.
Rules for
acceptable caches:
- The cache (or part of
it) should be located within or very close to a ghost town. They
should not be any further than a mile. Caches that are located in
cemeteries of ghost towns, even if they are under two miles away,
are acceptable! Any further than two miles is too far away from the
town.
- It doesn't matter when
you have found the cache, all dates are great!
- All caches in your list
have to be from Michigan, there are thousands of ghost towns in
Michigan, but this will make it a challenge!
- To make this
interesting, only one cache for each ghost town! Pere Cheney has a
population of zero, but has close to three caches in
it!
How to
fulfill the requirements of this
challenge:
- You can do what most
people do and create a bookmark with all of the caches. First,
create a bookmark named "MI Ghost Town Challenge - Your name" or
something to that affect. Next, add this cache to the list. Then
add caches that fulfill the definition of a ghost town caches. When
creating the bookmark for a cache add the name of the ghost town,
the state it is located in, and the day you found it. Send me a
notification through e-mail letting me know you have fulfilled the
requirements. Wait for a confirmation!
- You can also do it the
hard way and send me a document (Excel, Word, etc.) that lists the
twenty caches. You need to have the name of the ghost town, the
state it was in, the date you found it, and the waypoint
number(GC*****). E-mail me the document to
chrisrandolph1985@yahoo.com and wait for
confirmation.
I know it is a pain to
have to come a long way to snag a challenge cache, so you can find
this cache before you have fulfilled the requirements. You can also
log it, but please leave it as a Note until I confirm your caches,
then you can change it to a find! :)
Cache series that
could help you out:
This is a series of Michigan
ghost towns! Every cache in this series is acceptable!
This is a cache series of
Michigan cemeteries. Some caches are located in old cemeteries
of towns that have died out a long time ago. These are popular
in Southern Michigan!
There are many more
Michigan ghost town caches besides ones in these series, you just
have to look a little harder for them!
The cache
itself:
The final cache is
located in the Pine Grove Cemetery on Tyler Road. I put it here
because it is near the ghost town of Beebe. The coords do go
straight to the cache. It is a medium-sized clear lock & lock
container. It is in a cemetery and not hidden near any tombstones,
so please show respect and do not go after this at night. Breaking
Michigan laws aren't worth it.
If you are having trouble
figuring out the rules or whether or not a cache fulfills the
requirements, feel free to send me a message through my
profile!
FTF prize is a ARE YOU
GEOCACHER ENOUGH event Geocoin and Radman Forever Pathtag! Have
fun!