Higher Education Challenge
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The cache is at the posted coordinates but to log this cache you must show your dedication to learning. Do this by showing either by a list or in the log that you have found at least ten geocaches hidden on the campuses of 10 different institutes of higher education.
New Harmony seems a very fine town to place a cache dedicated to higher education. After all what student attending fourth grade in the Hoosier State has not studied Robert Owen and his famous Boatload of Knowledge? What? You did not get the benefit of a Hoosier History education? Well then let me give you a brief tutorial.
In 1814 Johann Georg Rapp, an ex-Lutheran and "prophet", lead his followers from Pennsylvania to a location along the Wabash River "25 miles from the Ohio mouth of the Wabash, and 12 miles from where the Ohio makes its curve first before the mouth" in the wilderness of the Indiana Territory. The Harmonists as they were called were a communal sect that split from the Lutheran Church in 1785. Believing the return of Christ would occur in their lifetime the Harmonists were content to live simply & industriously under a strict religious doctrine, giving up tobacco, and advocating celibacy. By 1819 the Harmonist had built 150 log homes, a church, barns, mills, stables, shops, a steam-operated wool carding and spinning factory and a famous granary. Manufactured goods included cotton, flannel, and wool cloth, yarn, knit goods, tin ware, rope, wagons, carts, plows, flour, beef, pork, butter, leather, and leather goods. The town also had a brewery, tavern, distillery, vineyards, and a winery. They were Germans after all. But by 1824 Christ had not returned and for spiritual & economic reasons as well as tiffs with the neighbors the Harmonist again decided to relocate, selling the entire town to Welsh reformer Robert Owen for 150,000 dollars.
Early in life Owen had turned his back on organized religion in favor of a personal philosophy which he considered an entirely new and original discovery. According to his thesis the great secret in the correct formation of man's character is to place him under the proper influences–physical, moral and social–from his earliest years. The orderly town, "laid out in a square" located about a 1/4 mile from the river above on the channel on a plane as level as the floor of a room, and surrounding 20,000 acres seemed just the place to put this theory to the test. On February 5, 1826, the town adopted a new constitution, "The New Harmony Community of Equality", whose objective was to achieve happiness based on principles of equal rights, equality of duties, cooperation, common property, economic benefit, freedom of speech and action, kindness and courtesy, order, preservation of health, acquisition of knowledge, and obedience to the country's laws. To aid Owen in building his utopian community William Maclure loaded a group of artists, authors, educators, scientists, naturalists and philosophers and other learned people onto a keelboat called the Philanthropist referred to my 4th grade history book as the "Boatload of Knowledge." Maclure brought them down the river from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to New Harmony to create a center of science and learning on the frontier.
Sadly Owen’s great experiment only lasted two years. One reason could be that in the words of son Robert Dale Owen the town population was “a heterogeneous collection of radicals, enthusiastic devotees to principle, honest latitudinarians, and lazy theorists, with a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Another reason could be that everyone was so busy philosophizing they forgot to plant any corn.
Today the whirr of golf carts has replaced the clank of the carding mill. But the granary, the labyrinth and the roofless church still hint at the town’s spiritual and social origins. So after collecting this cache walk around for a bit. Leave with more knowledge than you came with.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Fvg, cbaqre, teno n pnpur.