TeamGMMP: It is time to let this one go after over 14 years. Thanks to all, who solved it and found it [:)].
And this is, how you solve it:
1. From the cache description - John from Princeton was a real person, although I have never met him, LOL.
2. From the page HTML code - after you examine its formatting, you'll see that 6 letters stand out. They form the word Conway.
3. It is John Horton Conway - a famous English mathematician. And yes, you guessed it - the puzzle is Conway's Game Of Life. Search the internet for details.
4. You can solve it using paper and pencil. Or, find an online simulator, like this one: https://www.dcode.fr/game-of-life. To get proper results, your field cannot be infinite, restrict it to 9x9 squares.
5. As it typically happens in geocaching puzzles, with 10 objects / letters / items are to be guessed, typically it means that you are looking for last 5 digits for N and W in MM.MMM format.
6. Now what digit is which pictogram? If you look at the posted coordinates, the W tens digit of minutes is 0 (zero). Since the final cannot be more than 2 miles from the posted coordinates, at our longitude and latitude it means that W minutes will be somewhere between 03 and 07. There you go, the heart-shaped pictogram is your 0.
7. Type the heart-shaped pictogram in your online simulator and play with it, see where it takes you. Soon you'll see the other pictograms. The simulator will show, which generation it is.
8. Yes, the solution digits are the generation number [:)].
Thank you and happy caching!