-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Related Web Page
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
I found this place while searching for historic places to visit near my home. I decided to take the kids for a ride to check it out and we ended up placing a cache here. I have really enjoyed caches that have been placed at historic places that I would never have otherwise visited and I thought cachers might like to visit this unique location. The cache is a simple park and grab and is meant to be easy. Please re camouflage as good as or better than you found it.
Explore the area and post pics of anything interesting that you find. Pay close attention to signs, some of the roads are private drives and some are public roads and it sometimes difficult to tell which is which.
The following is from the related web page. Please visit the related web page for more information and photos.
Russian Village, or Churaevka, as it is known to its inhabitants, was established as a summer retreat for Russian refugees who fled from Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Not simply an ethnic neighborhood transplanted to a country setting, the village was created by two Russian writers. Count Ilya Tolstoy and George Grebenstchikoff. Although Tolstoy was the first to discover the area when he was visiting a translator for one of his books in Southbury, it was Grebenstchikoff who dreamed of establishing a seasonal cultural center and actively planned to create a rural haven where Russian writers and artists could live and flourish.
Both men were attracted by the natural beauty of the Connecticut hills, which reminded them of the Russian countryside. The small dacha (vacation home) that Tolstoy built in 1923 is still standing, one of the few properties in the Russian Village Historic District that has not been remodelled for year-round use. He likened the setting for his cottage to his family’s estate near Tula, about 130 miles from Moscow, known as Yasnaya Polyana (literally clear meadow). The stands of birches on Horse Fence Hill, as it was first known in Southbury, were also a familiar sight to the first settlers, but these are no longer standing, having given way to other deciduous trees, as well as mature evergreens which were planted by the community more than 50 years ago.
George Grebenstchikoff, the son of a Russian peasant, was born in Churaev, Siberia. From 1925, when he came to Southbury, until his death in 1957, he used his talents as a writer to promote Churaevka, named for his birthplace. In one of his books, published in Italy in 1935, he described the area and his ongoing dream for its future. The book, II Meso: Lettere Dal Pomerag, literally letters from the Pomeraug, is liberally illustrated with photographs which capture his romantic vision of himself as a new pioneer in the Connecticut wilderness.
Underlying this romantic metaphor, however, was the enthusiasm of a zealot combined with a surprising degree of pragmatism. He purchased most of Tolstoy’s holdings in 1925. The following year he added another 100 acres to the village, purchased from a local landowner, and had begun to articulate his visionary concept for Churaevka. In an extensive interview in the Bridgeport Post, July 7, 1928, he described his threefold mission for the colony. It can be summarized as follows: In addition to his basic concept of a harmonious cultural center “conducive to creative development,” he envisioned the colony as a “practical school of life.” His final goal for the village was far grander in scope. Churaevka was to be an active center for the dissemination of the knowledge of Russian life (presumably that of pre-revolutionary Russia) and a force for peace in the world. He believed that a free exchange of ideas and material goods between the United States and Siberian Russia would lead to a spiritual and peaceful cooperation. By 1927 he had already sold some of his lots and drawn up his development plan for the community, reserving open space in a manner that anticipated modern suburban planning by many decades. Except for the fact that it never had as many settlers as Grebenstchikoff had anticipated, the village today essentially conforms to his original plan.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Qrnq ybt ba tebhaq.