Peace Garden Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

Nomex: As there's been no cache to find for months, I'm archiving it to keep it from continually showing up in search lists, and to prevent it from blocking other cache placements. If you wish to repair/replace the cache sometime in the future, just contact us (by email), and assuming it meets the guidelines, we'll be happy to unarchive it.

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Hidden : 6/23/2012
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

This cache is now In Memory of The Peace Garden. The coordinates have been changed due to construction and will have to change again once the new, more generic park is created over what is now a temporary gravel parking lot.

The current cache is a magnetic key holder attached to old farm implement near the beige container currently housing the Gates Co-op Office. Bring your own pen. It's not attached to the mailboxes or their stand.

Muggle Alert: Residents still congregate on the water (east) side of the container and stop by to get their mail. Play tourist, take pictures, be sneaky. I'll try to keep this going as long as possible. This is a piece of history that's not going to be here much longer

Congrats to Hillside Cacher for the FTF.

The original Peace Garden was made up of many small plots, zealously tended over the years by many different gardeners who tried to create some beauty out around the "Charles Van Damme" ferry that Marin County leveled during the houseboat wars of the 1970s. Some of the original gardners and their pets are no longer alive, but their memory is still here, even though the garden is just this tiny remnant today.

The Gates Co-op will be undergoing major changes in the next 12-18 months. There is a lot of new construction going on. Most of the houseboats will move to the "Van Damme Dock" which you can see to the south between the big green ark and the smaller arks near Main Dock. A few Gates houseboats will move to other docks in Waldo Point Harbor.

A Bit of History:
 
With the restructuring of the Waldo Point Harbor and the Gates Cooperative, efforts are being made to protect the paddlewheel and smoke stack of the Charles Van Damme were removed for preservation with the hopes of placing both of them near the new Van Damme Dock. For reconstruction information
 
Before the Peace Garden, Gate 6 Road had 3 ferry boats. The Charles Van Damme, was the center of the house boat community.  The ferry was originally built in 1916, to carry cars from Marin to Richmond, then the Martinez-Benicia run and in 1958 was converted into a restaurant at Jack London Square. In 1959 Donlon Arques bought her at auction and brought her to her final resting place at Gate 6 in Sausalito. Here she became the centerpiece of the houseboat community, home to Juanita’s Kitchen and the infamous “Ark”.  Local bands continued to play benefits there in an unsuccessful effort to save the antique boat.  In March 1983, over the efforts of protesters, bulldozers destroyed the ferry and cleared the area for the development of the Waldo Point Harbor houseboat marina, leaving only the paddlewheel and the red smokestack lying alongside Gate 6 Road.
 
The other two ferries on Gate 6 Road: The City of Seattle, 121-foot, side paddle wheel ferry, built in 1888 is the oldest wooden hulled ferry on the West Coast. Today she floats on a concrete hull in Yellow Ferry Harbor nearer the end of Gate 6 Road.  The Issaquah, built in 1914 in Puget Sound, was a 114 foot double ender paddle wheel ferry that came to San Francisco under her own power in 1918. She was also broken down and cleared away during the development of Waldo Point Harbor.  The pilot houses of the Issaquah were rescued and taken to Galilee Harbor near Dunphy Park in Sausalito.

Curious about our community visit the 2012 Smithsonian article "Livin' on the Dock of the Bay" or the Marinscope article, "Sausalito Historical Society: Where are Sausalito’s old ferryboats now?"

Additional Hints (No hints available.)



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