A Changing View in Middletown Traditional Cache

The bucolic scene depicted in the picture below took place almost 50 years ago in what is now Poricy Park.  Find the cache and you will find yourself almost at the same location where the photographer of this photo stood.  After reveling in your navigating skills and signing the log, take a moment to enjoy the surrounding landscape.  How has the view changed since the photo was taken? How has it stayed the same?

The view from here reveals a land that is particularly rich in history.  Travel back in time more than 350 years and this land was most likely temperate forest.  Members of the Lenape Navesink tribe inhabited this area.  By 1664, Middletown was being settled by the English and in 1667 the land was deeded to the Throckmorton family.  In 1767, an Irish mason by the name of Joseph Murray bought the land and his name and story have become intrinsically linked to it.  You can still see the farmhouse and barn that Joseph Murray built.  Here he lived with his four children and wife Rebecca.  During the Revolutionary War, Joseph Murray was known as a fierce and daring patriot. In 1780 while tending to his crops, he was shot and killed in these very fields by loyalists.  The photo was taken more than 200 years after the death of Joseph Murray when it was the Gebhardt family farm.  The photo shows the numerous additions and changes that had been made to Murray’s barn and farmhouse.  In the early 1970s at the encouragement of the Poricy Park Citizen’s Committee, Middletown Township acquired the land, thus saving it from development.  The Murray barn was restored in 1978 and the farmhouse in 1981.  They are still the property of Middletown Township and are maintained by Poricy Park Conservancy.

The cache is a traditional container within 20 feet of the trail.  Nearby parking is available.