What's This? Traditional Cache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
I have driven by this spot almost every day for the past two months and always wondered what was going on there. I finally stopped to take a closer look. At the top of a little hill there is a concrete marker and a make-shift flag pole. The hill is a little steap, so be careful when it's wet outside. Other that that it's a simple hide. You are looking for a camoed pill bottle.
The marker at the top of the hill reads: "Green Bay Road - Pioneer Road Chicago to Green Bay - Established by the Federal Governmnet 1832". While looking for info on this marker I came across a Chicago area historical society page on the road to Green Bay. It reads, in part:
"Green Bay, Wisconsin, as well as Chicago, Illinois, were important areas first to the Indians and later to the European settlers. To the Indians, Green Bay and Chicago were trading areas within the Great Lakes region. Both were portages between Lake Michigan and river systems, making them natural trading centers. In the era of European and American settlement, these two trading posts were marked by forts. In Chicago it was Fort Dearborn and in Green Bay it was Fort Howard. To move from area to area the Indians established connecting trails between the two cities. The Europeans, mostly French and German, adopted and developed them for their own use. Andrew J. Vieau, whose father came as a trader to Milwaukee in 1795, referring to the road between Green Bay and Milwaukee in 1837, writes: "This patch was originally an Indian trail and very crooked but the whites would straightened it by cutting across lots each winter with their jumpers, wearing bare streaks through the thin covering, to be followed in the summer by foot and horse back travel along the shortened path."2 A jumper was the type of sled known as a French train, consisting of a box some six feet long and three feet wide, which was drawn over the surface of the snow.
The Green Bay trail began in Chicago with two alternative routes, each of which gave rise, in the period of European settlement, to an important highway. The first, which is the one more commonly identified with Green Bay road, started at the north end of the Michigan Boulevard bridge and ran north along the height of land between the lake shore and the North Branch of the river. The route led north on Rush Street as far as Chicago Avenue and from there northwesterly for a mile to the intersection of Clark Street and North Avenue. In the earlier life of the city this diagonal path was represented by a road, but modern city building pays little heed to the preservation of Indian trails, and all traces of this diagonal path has long since disappeared. Professor Halsey, an industrious historian of Lake County, recorded in 1860 that he lived at the south end of this diagonal, and it was then and for several years afterward known as the Green Bay Road. Continuing northwest, the trail kept inland from the lake some distance, coming in sight of it between Chicago and Milwaukee only at Gross Point (now Evanston). It passes Waukegan three miles inland, Kenosha five miles, and Racine about the same distance.
In 1831, a post office was established in Chicago and for some time cities for 50 miles around became tributary to Chicago for its postal facilities. It wasn't until the middle 1830's that settlers in any numbers began to turn their attention to the wooded area to the north of the city.
The primary use of the Green Bay road during the pioneer days of Chicago was as a mail route between the two forts and it is here where most of our information about the conditions of this road are gathered."
The rest of the page can be found here: (visit link)
As far as the flag pole goes...I don't know who put it up or why. Please look, but don't touch.
CONGRATS TO TOM K. ON FTF!
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures