Plainview began as a central holy site for Long Island Native Americans. After the retreat of glaciers, a small kettle pond was left, by the corner of present-day Manetto Hill and Old Country Roads, to collect fresh water at the edge of Hempstead Plains. Mascopas pond was a valued source of water to the natives.
The settlement came to be called "Manetto Hill". Manitou was the Native American word for god. This cache is a few feet East from what was an important river that ran all the way down to what is now the Massapequa Creek & reservoir in the Massapequa Preserve. The river is mostly underground now throughout Plainview and Bethpage but it does spring up right behind Woodward Parkway Elementary School in South Farmingdale (or can be seen at Radcliffe Avenue’s dead-end).
Plainview's origins began when an indentation in the ground left behind by retreating glaciers. The pond - just northeast of the modern-day intersection of Old Country and Manetto Hill Roads - became a holy site for Indians across Long Island, who valued rare sources of fresh water. Indians hunted in the area, often after praying at the foot of Mannatto Hill. Hempstead settler Robert Williams, originally of wales, purchased land west of Moscopas from the Matinecocks in 1648. The major European land purchase, however, was in 1695, when Thomas Powell's Bethpage Purchase extended north to Moscopas. A tiny farming community formed near the pond, taking the name Manetto Hill. It remained isolated and insignificant for more than a century.
Mannetto Hill was the home of the great spirit Manitou, and in fact it was originally called Manitou Hill. He goes on to claim that Manitou Hill was the radiating point of several native American traditions. The most famous story, is that during a great drought, the chief climbed to the top of Manitou on the instruction of the spirits, who told him to shoot an arrow from the heights and where the arrow landed, they would find water. Which according to the story, is just what he did. And where the arrow landed, water sprung up from the ground, which became known as Moscopas.
We know where Moscopas was. It was filled in for the construction of the H.B. Mattlin Middle School, at the corner of Manetto Hill Road and Washington Avenue in Plainview, the site of the actual swamp being where the athletic field is now. During the early years of the school, it would frequently flood by water seeping up from the ground, which many joked was the native American’s revenge for filling in Moscopas.
Directions to the cache: The cache is not up on Manetto Hill or on the Moscopas Pond site, it is South of Old Counrtry Road and 1 block West of Plainview Road where you will find Hope Drive. There is a new 9/11 memorial there displaying a small piece of metal recovered from the World Trade Center. After checking that out, there is a building a few feet to the East that used to be the Old Country Movie Theater years ago. The cache is South, behind that building. If you go through the large hole in the fence to the South, you will see the bed of what used to be the river that flowed from Moscopas and then all the way to Massapequa Creek and on to the Great South Bay.
Cache is an automotive paint touch-up bottle which has a brush attached to the screw-on cap and there’s a marble in the bottle to help stir up your cars paint when you shake it. Please note that cache was set late on a Sunday in the fall and there no cars at all... if you go during a work day, you may encounter a few muggles in the lot
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