Liberty History Traditional Cache
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Size: 
(regular)
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NO CELL PHONE SERVICES IN THIS TOWN. USE GPS OR SAVE OFFLINE PRIOR TO ARRIVING. This cache is meant to compliment the nearby Earth Cache, Liberty Gold. It is about the history of Liberty and the gold that built this mining town.
Liberty is the living ghost of a late 1800s gold mining camp. Gold was discovered on Swauk Creek, two miles west of here, in September 1873. The discovery brought an immediate gold rush by almost everyone in Kittitas Valley at the time, about 200 people. Not everyone got rich but the gold brought an immediate boom to a struggling Kittitas Valley with its wonderful land for raising cattle and sheep but with no way of getting them to market to bring wealth back to the county. Gold was wealth that was easily transported and it brought produce, goods and people to the valley. Later, in 1880, gold was discovered across the road to the south of this geocache and the new mines produced some of the largest nuggets ever found in Washington State. The old house you see across the road, the one that is about to collapse, belonged to T. F. Meagher, a prosperous miner who laid out a townsite called Meaghersville, now called Liberty, and opened one of the first stores in the camp. The place boomed with miners washing gold from the old channel gravels which are 12 to 120 feet below the surface and soon gold was discovered in the hills around Liberty. Crystalline wire gold, a rare form of gold, was discovered in the hill just one mile east of this location on Flag Mountain. Specimens of Liberty crystalline wire gold from Liberty are now found in mineral collections around the world including the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. The gold fields proved to be limited to a small area around Liberty, about a five mile radius, and the “Mother Lode” was never found. The population gradually dwindled after 1940 although a few hardy miners stuck it out and newcomers continue to find gold to this day. Liberty never became a true ghost town although the population did get down to four before becoming recognized for its tenacity in the 1970s. A half dozen or so home owners took on the U. S. government in a title dispute and became a rare example of the little guy beating city hall, in this case the U. S. Forest Service. In 1970 the U. S. Forest Service claimed the residents were squatting on U. S. government land and would have to leave because the townsite was never properly recorded and they wanted to remove the buildings and make a camp ground out of the townsite. The argument between the home owners and the Forest Service led to the creation of the Liberty Historical District and then led to the passage of a special interest bill passed by the United States Congress and signed by President Carter in 1979 that allowed the residents to buy their land from the government for $2400 an acre and thus receive clear title to their property. There are now eight people in the winter and fourteen in the summer who call Liberty home. In addition there are the spirits of the early miners that still call this place home and whose presence you can feel if you stop here for a while to experience the beauty and solitude of the place. There are pictures in the fire hall and a kiosk with pictures outside and an arrastra across the street from the fire hall. It is truly a historic place where the visitor has to hunt for the history just as the early miner hunted for gold. The cache is placed with the permission of the landowner, Wesley Engstrom, who also provided this rich history of Liberty. FTF goes to LanSearch! Way to go!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Orybj frng ohg nobir genpx ba qeviref fvqr. Pbagnvare vf oynpx.