Dundas. 2:30 PM, 9/7/1876
The Younger brothers, Jesse and Frank James, and Charley Pitts
leave their comrades, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell, dead on the
street in Northfield. Six men on five horses. The Youngers are
seriously wounded - Cole in the hip, Bob in the elbow, and Jim on
the shoulder. Their guide, Chadwell, is dead. They're on the wrong
side of the river. And they failed to disable the telegraph office
in Northfield.
The next bridge across the river was three miles south in
Dundas. As the gang nears the town they pause at the riverside
(near the cache site) to cleanse their wounds and to check out the
bridge. Their luck changes. The town has not been alerted because,
although a warning had been sent, the telegraph agent was out to
lunch. A young farmhand approaches with a farm horse which they
steal. They ride off toward the bridge tailed cautiously by a
two-person posse from Northfield (on the horses of the two dead
robbers.) Once across the bridge, one of the outlaws threatens a
local with his pistol, who replies "Put down that pistol and I can
whip you." The outlaw refuses the challenge. Afterward, the Dundas
citizen bragged that he had taught those young men some manners.
The gang rides on toward
Millersburg.
For hints see
the letterboxing directions.
Congrats to:
- dlgps - FTF this cache, and
- threenow24 - First to find all the ten geocaches along the
escape route. And they did it backwards. That agrees with the
unsubstantiated rumor that the outlaws had the horseshoes put on
their horses backwards to throw off their pursuers.
- tomslusher - First to do the series in one day.
- twofreetimers - First to find all the letterboxes, including
the pure letterboxes at Marysville and Lake Crystal.
Reference: "Caught in the Storm: A Field Guide to the James
& Younger Gang Escape Trail" published by the Northfield
Historical Society, 2008, and written by eighth graders under the
supervision of Earl Weinmann. Includes GPS coordinates to the
sites, pictures, histories of the towns and many interesting
sidelights in addition to the main story.