Note: Between May 1st and September 31st there is a $3.00 per vehicle charge collected at the Dry Brooks Day Use Area!
The area around the Great Oak Nature Trail is managed with the wildlife in mind. This includes maintaining open fields and meadows. Fields are plowed and prepared for planting in the early spring. Plantings may include warm season grasses, wildflowers, food plots, or seedlings. Warm season grasses are native to the area and include switch grass, big and little bluestem, and Indian grass. These grasses are drought tolerant, and will stay standing into the fall and winter. The grasses provide excellent cover and habitat for pheasants, wild turkey, rabbits and songbirds.
There are 850 acres of land planted in warm season grasses throughout the area surrounding the lake. This has been a cooperative effort between the Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pheasants Forever, and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Blue Marsh has an extensive wildlife structure program. A variety of structures are built, installed and maintained throughout the project area. Stop # 12 along this trail shows examples of structures found in the park. The structures enhance the wildlife habitat and attract a great variety of animals. You can build these structures at home to make your backyard more wildlife friendly.
Fence rows are left between fields to provide cover, habitat, food, and nesting sites for a variety of small animals. These rows typically include staghorn sumac, multi-flora rose, honeysuckle, blackberry, and wineberry. Field edges often transition into forest habitat. As you walk this trail, think about who could be watching you. Friendly wildlife species may include: white-tailed deer, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, foxes, salamanders, toads, frogs, turtles, snakes, and a variety of birds.
This cache is a mystery cache where you need to solve an easy field puzzle to get the coordinates for the final.
When you arrive at the trailhead (the posted coordinates or listed below as a waypoint) grab one of the Great Oak Nature Trail Brochures to take with you on your walk. The brochure will provide you with information about the different stops along the trail as well as the information needed to solve the field puzzle to get to the final cache. Make sure you return your brochure to the appropriate place at the end of your walk to ensure they are there for the next cachers. IMPORTANT NOTE: If the brochure box is empty, please look at the image gallery on this cache page. There are 4 separate images in the gallery that make up the brochure and can be used to solve the puzzle.
Once you have your brochure, locate the section titled "Flood Control" and find the following numbers in the section to solve for the final coordinates :
A: The number in the acorn next to the title = 1A
B: Flood control measures prevented more than how much damage? $B0 million
C: What is the surface area of the lake? 1,1C0 acres
D: How many feet long is the dam? D,775 feet
E: Blue Marsh Lake was authorized through the Flood Control Act of 196E
F: The dam is capable of holding how many billion gallons of water during times of flood storage? 1F.28 billion gallons
Final cache is located at:
N 40 23.B(C+4)D
W 076 01.(E+7)(F+3)(A-2)