Maple Grove was built by New York banker Charles Macy, beginning in 1850, when he purchased a 35-acre parcel of farmland as a retreat from the heat and cholera epidemics of New York City. He erected an elegant brick mansion, but owned it for only 7 years before moving back to the city. The property changed hands several times, until Adolphus and Matilda Hamilton purchased it in 1870. Their daughter Elise married John Kinkead, and their descendants lived at Maple Grove until 1987. (Interestingly, Elise’s sister Edith married John Kinkead’s brother, and that couple and their descendants lived in a nearby estate called Southwood, the buildings of which are now demolished and the grounds absorbed into the Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery.) In 1985, an arsonist set fire to the Maple Grove main building, gutting the south wing. The owner, the last surviving Hamilton-Kinkead relative, directed that the building receive stabilizing repairs and ultimately bequeathed it to the St. Simeon Foundation.
Today, the St. Simeon Foundation and the Maple Grove Restoration Committee continue to work to restore the building and grounds. The estate was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. Please visit the Maple Grove website, from which this history was excerpted, for more information.
The posted coordinates bring you to the front lawn of the estate, just to make sure you take a few moments to admire the carefully restored manor house. From there, you will need to count the steps from the ground to the front porch on all three sides of the porch:
A = number of steps on the left side
B = number of steps in the center
C = number of steps on the right side
where “left” and “right” assume you are facing the house, and the count includes the top step, the porch itself. The coordinates of the final are
N41 40.DEF
W073 55.GHI
where
D=B+1
E=C-2
F=A-4
G=B
H=C-A-2
I=C+3
The cache is a small lock ‘n’ lock container. The parking coordinates direct you to a small visitor’s parking lot south of the house.
Update 6/26/11: Apparently they don't mow the entire grounds during the summer, and when I visited the cache today the area surrounding GZ was waist-high grass. There also appeared to be some poison ivy both in the grass and near GZ. I've adjusted the terrain level to reflect these conditions. Just something to bear in mind when planning your visit.
Update 1/12/19: Replaced and relocated the cache after its original hiding place was destroyed by the forces of Nature and the original container disappeared. The new cache is, I regret to say, a more ordinary placement than the original.