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This cache is located in the South Fram Preserve off Old Coach Rd in Charlestown near the Nordic Lodge. The Preserve is open dawn to dusk. Please observe this at all times. This should be a quick PNG. Or so you hope!
Sometimes, the history of a place can be sensed before the stories of its past emerge, before black and white images bring shape to a forgotten landscape. The rest, of course, is left to the imagination.
The pieces of Charlestown's 118-acre South Farm Preserve off Old Coach Road fit together like something of a puzzle, offering those who walk its field and woodland trails a glimpse into the town's past as a farming community. The chimney ruin of a Finnish sauna, a historic cemetery and a restored sheep barn are all that's left of the lives of 19th century farmers and 20th century immigrants who tilled its soil and raised livestock to survive. Looming some 20 feet high, the hulking brick chimney of the Korpi Sauna - or what's left of it - is something of an oddity in the middle of the 10-acre North Field, its rusted pipe-top recalling the beacon of a lighthouse.
In its heyday, the sauna gave Finnish immigrants a place to heat stones to high temperatures; by throwing water over the coals, steam pushed sauna temperatures as high as 180 degrees in order to cleanse the mind, refresh the spirit and prepare the dead for burial, a sign next to the ruin recounts.
No pictures of the original structure exist.
Down a field path mowed by the town's Public Works Department, the Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Charlestown Number 10 sits shadowed by a canopy of trees. Its fence nail cuts put the enclosure's creation-date somewhere in the mid-19th century.
Fresh, black metal chains hang from 29 granite posts around the recently cleared burial site, while the headstones - which had been toppled by vandals - have been reset and are surprisingly well preserved. The cemetery is the resting place of American Civil War veterans: William H. Card, who served as a musician with the Rhode Island Third Heavy Artillery and later died from influenza; and Joseph R. Sullivan. It also holds a mystery: there's no date of death for card's wife, Lucinda Church, born in 1836.
The farm's split-level Horstmeyer sheep barn was built sometime in the early 1800s, but its red cedar shingles and shutters are fresh after last year's rebuild. Inside, a small bat has taken up residence in the rafters.
The federal Agricultural Census of 1850 notes that Shadrack and Elijah Card farmed 30 sheep at the farm - likely harvesting about six pounds of wool on average each year. Elijah Card's son William later lived off the land, growing corn, oats and hay, and making butter and cheese.
By the late 1920s, immigrants Otto and Rosa Korpi were raising poultry at the farm. The original farmhouse, which once dotted the Old Coach roadscape, but has since been razed.
Today, the preserve holds more than a mile of walking trails that stretch south towards the 200-acre Pasquiset Pond Preserve on the west side of Old Coach Road. It's a place Arnold hopes schools will take children to learn about local history, and where residents and visitors alike can enjoy quiet solitude.
At the edge of the 7-acre South Field, volunteers John Jackson and his son Ben, of South Kingstown, put the finishing touches on a wooden bench overlooking a small stand of orange milkweed that has attracted Monarch butterflies. Pitch pine trees skirts the woodland edges, and blue bird boxes built by local Brownie troops dot the corners.
The fields today aren't suitable for hay production like they used to be, Arnold says, due to black swallowwort - an invasive plant that doesn't interest the discriminating taste buds of cows. Ironically, part of the property was used as a dairy farm as late as the mid- 1970s.
The town of Charlestown purchased South Farm in late 2002 for $750,000 from the Lillian P. Horstmeyer and the Tovio E. Pirhonen Trust - $450,000 of which came from a taxpayer-funded, open space bond. The remainder was covered by a grant from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, according to the town clerk's office.
A $20,000 trails grant from the DEM also helped the Conservation Commission, the property's manager, develop the preserve for recreational use. Commissioners Arnold, Richard Thieke, Kerin Browning, Grace Klinger, Hal Hultgren and former member Forrester Safford volunteered countless hours cleaning it up, Arnold says, noting the truck loads of refuse that were removed. Four picnic tables now sit next to a small parking area and an informational kiosk built by Hultgren. Self-guided tour brochures have also been created by Browning, and are available at Town Hall.
The preserve is one of four properties managed by the commission; the others include the Schoolhouse Pond Preserve off Kings Factory Road, Richard Trails off South County Trail; and the Arnold Family White Cedar Swamp off Old Post Road.
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Juvpu bar vf vg?