Going for Gold Traditional Geocache
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(small)
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The cache located at the ruins of the Balashi gold meltry near the Frenchmen’s pass.
The theme is gold (or silver). The cache is a plastic camo container with geocache sticker and contains a logbook, pen & pencils and unique (silver) square Aruba 50 ct coins (us$0.30) and a couple of silver and gold colored Aruba key chains/bottle opener. Please leave gold/yellow colored or silver colored item.
After the Spanish and other settlers could not find any gold or emeralds they declared these Islands “useless Islands”. The Dutch retained the ABC islands in since 1634 and it was not until 1824 that a local boy (Willem Rasmijn) herding his father’s goats found a little gold nugget. A small gold rush erupted and the Dutch commander at that time ordered Dutch soldiers to guard the areas where the gold was found. Later when there was no more surface gold to be found the government extended two British companies the rights to gold mining concessions.
The first one the Aruba Island Gold mining company Ltd at Bushiribana in 1867 and the second one Aruba Gold Concessions, Ltd. at Balashi established in 1899. The last one used the "newly" invented cyanide method to extract the gold from the crushed rocks and ore. Remnants of this are still visible today (the pink colored sand near the lagoon). The rocks and ore where transported through the scenic “Frenchmen’s pass” by steam tractor and carts and dumped in the large room where you can still clearly see where the big steam crushing hammers and large rotating wheels were located.
None of the companies made any profit except for one year 1907 even though almost 3000 pounds of gold was excavated from Aruba.
At the start of WW I heavy machinery and dynamite where no longer available and the gold mining era came to an abrupt end. After the war the meltry was no longer operational because of severe deterioration and lack of gold. Many machinery including a small steam tractor and wagons were sold and the meltry was abandoned.
This is a very peaceful area and has beautiful view of the Spanish Lagoon inner coastal inlet which is now a wild life reserve.
After your find you can take a short hike along the inner coastal lagoon and enjoy the scenery.
(occasional gunshots can be heard by local gun club in vicinity)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
ng pbare bs gur sybbe oruvaq gur ebpx haqre gur qenva cvcr