Voici l'eau claire! Traditional Cache

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zuma!: Time for this one to go. It had a good run

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Hidden : 3/29/2010
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

A short walk along a wooded area, above the south shore of the Eau Claire River.

According to legend, the Eau Claire River, and the city itself got it's name from French explorers.

"Eau Claire" is the singular form of the original French name, "Eaux Claires", meaning "Clear Waters", for the Eau Claire River. According to the legend, the river was so named because early French explorers journeying down the rain-muddied Chippewa River, and when they got to the confluence of the Eau Claire River, excitedly exclaiming "Voici l'eau claire!" ("Here [is] clear water!"). The term became the name of the river, and later the town.


The name appears to be a bit of a misnomer, since the Eau Claire River is not particularly clear, and has a root beer color. Anyway, it is a good legend, but it may not be true.


According to Frank Smoot, a researcher at the Chippewa Valley Museum and a writer for Volume One, it is more likely that the river’s name is a French trader’s translation of the Ojibwe waashegaminaaboo-ziibi, “clear, good-water river” (like the Mississippi is misi-ziibi, “great river”). So perhaps it was the Ojibwe that considered the water clear.


But even then, it probably still was “stained" the color of root beer that we see today. The main Eau Claire River (after its two forks meet) runs east to west through Eau Claire County. And even though, as a whole, the Chippewa Valley was canopied in white pine – in the river's drainage area, not so much.


Two Wisconsin ecological regions meet east of Eau Claire. Historically, the “Western Coulees and Ridges” had southern hardwood forests, oak savanna, scattered prairies, and marshes along the rivers. All growing on silty, sandy, loamy, leachy soil. The “Central Sand Plains” formed around the bygone Glacial Lake Wisconsin. That area contained wetlands – open bogs, shrub swamps, and sedge meadows – along with scattered prairies, oak forests, and barren land.


These ecoregions would have deposited tannins, silt, staining leaves, and whatnot into the Eau Claire River. It gets more turbid as it goes west towards the Chippewa, and so probably was never as clear as the legend says, though it may have been a bit more clear than the muddy Chippewa River.


Still, it is a good legend.



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Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Va gur ubyybj ybt

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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