AGT-Warren-646 Mystery Well Traditional Geocache
AGT-Warren-646 Mystery Well
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Size: 
(regular)
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The geocache hidden at the posted coordinates is a regular geocache, however, it is also part of the Allegheny GeoTrail (AGT), a publicly funded project designed to promote a pleasant and positive experience and image of the Allegheny National Forest region and its gateway communities. The AGT utilizes the growing interest in geocaching to assist both residents and visitors to the area in learning more about the unique attractions in the ten participating counties. This cache contains a unique self inking rubber stamp which you should use to stamp your Allegheny GeoTrail Passport to verify that you found it. When you have found a minimum of six AGT caches, you will be eligible to have your AGT passport validated and receive a commemorative AGT trackable geocoin at participating locations. You must have your official AGT passport with you when you find this cache in order to stamp it. Click on the Allegheny GeoTrail Logo below to visit the AGT website at www.alleghenygeotrail.com for complete details and a listing of participating locations where you may pick up and validate AGT passports to receive your souvenir geocoin, trackable at www.geocaching.com .
Located in southern Warren County, in the Pennsylvania Wilds, the hilltop settlement of Cherry Grove saw national history in the Spring and Summer of 1882 when the 646 Mystery Well ushered in a great oil boom. In a matter of months, hundreds of oil wells were drilled and a town sprang up in this isolated township in the hills. Before the railroad could lay a new line to Cherry Grove, the boom went bust. Thousands of people moved on. Those who remained kept the memory of the Oil Excitement alive with reunions that became known as “Old Home Day”.
In 1982, a group of Old Home Day regulars volunteered to build a replica of the historic 646 Mystery Well. That spring and summer, the volunteers completed a life-size 1882-style oil derrick and shanty in time for the Centennial celebration. In preparation for the 125th anniversary in 2007, volunteers came together once again to rebuild the Replica of the 646 Mystery Well.
In good weather, you can drive fairly close to the 646 Mystery Well replica if necesary, but there is plenty of parking at the nearby firehall and township buildings just a couple hundred feet away from the parking location and this location would probably give you less chance of getting your vehicle stuck in snow or mud conditions. Please do not park where you would be blocking the fire truck doors. The history lives on through a small museum in the well shanty adjacent to the 646 Mystery Well replica and each year during Cherry Grove Old Home Day, the museum is open to the public. Come back and learn more about this interesting bit of history if you get the chance.
The parking coordinates are at the 646 Mystery Well replica and tool house museum. The extra waypoint is just for those of you who are interested in a little bit of oil boom history. When you get to the coordinates of the extra waypoint. You will be standing in the middle of what used to be an old wooden oil tank built into a hole in the ground. Look around you. You should see that you are standing in the center of a rather large flat area surrounded by an earthen dike about 5 feet tall. I have it on good authority that the oil men excavated this area using horse drawn slip-scrapers to excavate this large depression. Then they built a wooden sided tank about 100 feet across to fit within this area. If you look close, you can see that the mound is higher on one side. This side was built higher to allow the men to haul oil in barrels on a horsedrawn wagon up to the edge of the tank where they would dump the oil from the barrels into the large wooden tank. This project was undertaken because at the time, there was no pipeline and there was no railroad to Cherry Grove to haul out the oil, so they built this large tank as a storage area in anticipation of the railroad or pipeline being built in the near future. Of course the boom played out too fast to allow either of those things to happen, so the oil tank was abandoned. Today, only the embankment remains.
While you are here, make sure to find The Toy's Toybox cache by Krazytrain nearby the extra historic waypoint.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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