Old Tatham Road #7 Traditional Cache
Bioknee: Missing again. Archiving series. Caches hidden on FS land are only permitted for 1 year.
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This is the seventh in a series of stops along the Tatham Gap road between Robbinsville and Andrews. This road was, for 500 Robbinsville area Cherokees, the beginning of the Trail of Tears.
We have numbered the stops from north to south, from Robbinsville to Andrews, since that is the way the road was then travelled. The series of caches can be approached from either direction.
In our research, we haven't yet determined the exact location of Fort Delaney. One historian simply stated that it had been "swallowed up by Andrews". This cache is placed near the end of the present day Tatham Gap Road. That there is a bridge to cross seems appropriate, in the context of what the Cherokees faced at this point. The adjacent field may have once housed the "fort" which was likely a simple wooden stockade constructed only to detain the 500 temporarily until they could be moved on to Ft. Butler in Murphy.
We experienced a wide range of feelings while researching this series, from the pain of the Cherokees, to the euphoria from the wild beauty of the area. We hope you, too, have been touched in some way.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Zntargvp, raq bs oevqtr
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