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The cache is located as close to N 40 degrees as we were able to hide it at this location. It is a micro container, so please be sure to bring your own pen. Parking is available; young and old should be able to participate.
The fact that the 40th parallel passes within a mile of our home, and knowing the history behind this latitude, we wanted to try to hide something here and reflect back on our history on our nation’s birthday.
Happy hunting!
Congrats to deb3day for FTF
On more than one occasion in American History, the 40th parallel has played a role in defining the boundaries between states. This area of southeastern Pennsylvania, including the location of this cache, was clearly the topic of debate and negotiation in early colonial America. Later, the 40th parallel would play another factor in the lead up to the American Civil War.
Maryland's charter granted the land north of the entire length of the Potomac River up to the 40th parallel. A problem arose when Charles II granted a charter for Pennsylvania. The grant defined Pennsylvania's southern border as identical to Maryland's northern border, the 40th parallel. But the terms of the grant clearly indicate that Charles II and William Penn assumed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle, Delaware when in fact the 40th parallel falls north of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony's capital city. Thus the Pennsylvania's southern boundary as defined in its charter was contradictory and unclear. The most serious problem was that the Maryland claim would put Philadelphia, which became the major city in Pennsylvania, within Maryland.
Negotiations ensued after the problem was discovered in 1681. A compromise proposed by Charles II in 1682, which might have resolved the issue, was undermined by Penn receiving the additional grant of the 'Three Lower Counties' along Delaware Bay, which later became the Delaware Colony, a satellite of Pennsylvania. These lands had been part of Maryland's original grant.
In 1732 the proprietary governor of Maryland, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, signed a provisional agreement with William Penn's sons which drew a line somewhere in between, and also renounced the Calvert claim to Delaware. But later Lord Baltimore claimed that the document he signed did not contain the terms he had agreed to, and refused to put the agreement into effect. Beginning in the mid-1730s, violence erupted between settlers claiming various loyalties to Maryland and Pennsylvania. The border conflict between Pennsylvania and Maryland would be known as Cresap's War.
The issue was unresolved until the Crown intervened in 1760, ordering Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore to accept the 1732 agreement. Maryland's border with Delaware was to be based on the Transpeninsular Line and the Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle. The Pennsylvania-Maryland border was defined as the line of latitude 15 miles south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia.
As part of the settlement, the Penns and Calverts commissioned an expert British team, astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon to survey the newly established boundaries between the Province of Pennsylvania, the Province of Maryland, Delaware Colony, and parts of Colony and Old Dominion of Virginia. This surveying took place between 1763 and 1767 and eventually became known as the Mason-Dixon Line.
A little over 1,000 miles to the west of this cache location, the 40th parallel forms the boundary between Kansas and Nebraska. On 30 May 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act created the Territory of Kansas and the Territory of Nebraska divided by the 40th parallel. Both territories were required to determine for themselves whether to permit slavery. Open conflict between free-state and pro-slavery forces in the Kansas Territory contributed to the build up to the American Civil War.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Whfg yvxr Cnhy Erirer, or thvqrq ol gur yvtug - bar vs ol ynaq.... naq lbh'yy or irel pybfr ol