Portal Ridge: A Bit of History Series Traditional Geocache
Darick: My first hide... so a tough one to let go, but the time has come. Happy caching!
Portal Ridge: A Bit of History Series
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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This cache is placed a short distance off of a paved walking path in the Portal Ridge neighborhood. It is a screw top plastic container with sufficient room for trades, travel bugs, and coins. As with any cache, please use stealth to conceal the location from muggles on the walking path and re-hide the container well.
The walking path is on the east side of the stream and the cache should be accessed from this side. You can park on the street, near the following coordinates: N 41° 10.378 W 096° 04.262. Google Maps Street View gives you a nice view of the sidewalk leading to the cache from this location.
(This geocache used to be under a bridge, but it has been muggled too often. When I originally hid this cache, it was further down the path, but the listing was denied because it was too close to another. That one is now archived, so I have moved this hide to the original, but never before published location.)
A bit of history of the area:
Founded in the late 1880s, Portal was a small town which was situated on Sections 16, 17, and 21 of Township 14, Range 12. It was platted by the Portal Land and Town Lot Company and it was possibly named for the portal of the western gateway. This small railroad town was predated by a one-room school and cemetery; both of which remain. It was located along the Union Pacific Railroad, northwest of Papillion, on Giles Road, between 108th and 114th Streets. A German Methodist church, bank, newspaper office and several stores sprang up in Portal in the late 1880s. The post office was established April 23, 1887. But frequent floooding and the depression of the 1890s sapped the strength of the growing community and it faded into oblivion. The post office was discontinued August 24, 1898. Portal's peak population was twenty-five in the 1890 census, though another source cited a population of sixty at one point.
The one-room school house was moved from 114th and Giles to 242 North Jefferson in Papillion and was the site of the now archived cache "Hatchet House" (GC12XFB). I placed a new cache "Portal School" (GC2D5W7) at the same location. Portal Cemetary is located at 108th and Chandler Road and contains the cache "Rest In Peace" (GCTV16). The Portal Ridge neighborhood where this cache is located is just to the southeast of the former location of Portal on land that was owned by Ernest Petersen. View the gallery for maps of the area from 1889 as well as a satellite view of the same area today.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)