Camp Winnegan Traditional Geocache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Ammo can near the southern boarder of public conservation land open to hiking.
Near the cache location, there is a cinder-block house in disrepair, and another chimney (south of house) which indicates there once was another house nearby. This cache is marked NOT kid-friendly because of all of the graffiti and "swear" words in and on the house. If you bring children old enough to read, it could certainly be a "learning opportunity", but it is up to you whether you want this 'opportunity'.
On the map from Mass Trails, there appear to be 4 public access routes to this land. I have explored the 2 at the southern end (SE and SW). If you know anything about the northern access points, please share that information. When hiding this cache, there were "No Trespassing" signs on the access road in the southwest corner. I called Shrewsbury Parks and Recreation to determine if these signs were valid or placed by protective neighbors. The Parks and Rec department removed the signs because they were not valid.
Your biggest challenge may be a parking location. I have parked at the 2 locations listed below as Trailheads. However, I am not sure these are legal parking spots, and you may be ticketed if your park there. I am not sure. I did NOT see any signs indicating "no parking". The safest parking location may be Flynn's Truck Stop at the corner of Grafton St and Highway 20, less than 1/2 mile to the South.
Camp Winnegan
I do not know the history of Camp Winnegan. The only tidbits I could find was that there used to be a girl scout camp here, and an eagle scout did a project here (paid for by Old Man Spags?). Perhaps the "house" was part of the girl scout camp. To me, it looks like a dining hall, since it does not appear there were interior rooms. If you know of any other history or other information about this land, please post a note to the cache listing, or send me an email.
There are many easy-to-walk trails heading north from this location. This public land is over 40 acres (according to my calculation, although the town website says "approximately 30 acres"), with many interesting features. I encourage you to explore this land and place other geocaches. While hiding this geocache, Squirt and I enjoyed climbing the rock cliffs and finding the old "tree house" and "snowmobile ramp" shown in the picture.
Background Info
When I first moved to Shrewsbury a couple of years ago, I quickly went to the town website (http://www.shrewsbury-ma.gov/) and explored the Parks and Recreation section. I was excited to see a listing of well over 20 facilities.
I made it my mission to visit every one of these precious town resources. I was excited to find that almost every one already had at least 1 geocache. But not all had a geocache. My children enjoyed Greylock Park the most, so this was the location of our first geocache hide in MA (Greylock).
Unlike the other listed parks, the location description for Camp Winnegan was not specific enough for me to easily find it ("Old Grafton Street, parallel to Route 140, just south of Route 9."). So, I finally found a topographical map which showed the location. I explored this conservation land 2 years ago, and have been wanting to hide a geocache on it ever since. The location is 1+ miles south of Route 9. I wonder why the location description is not better.
In the last couple of years the town website has been redone, and now includes a map which clearly shows the location, and Camp Winnegan is also now labeled on Google Maps (wasn't couple of years ago).
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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