When we started caching, we noticed that our unique neighborhood did not have any caches, so we finally decided to place one. The cache is located in one of several gardens maintained by residents of the Mexican War Streets. The cache can be reached via a path, so please do not trample any of the flowers or bushes. You can also visit another beautiful garden at the corner of Buena Vista and Jacksonia. It was too close to put another cache there. If you go, take note of the small shop on the corner. It was the coffee shop in the film Love and Other Drugs. BYOP.
Brief history of the area:
The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, as you may recall from your history books, allowed the United States to seize California and Texas from Mexico.
As Story of Old Allegheny City tells it, in 1785 Robinson "had been the first white male child" -- and thus, apparently, the first child whose birth anyone bothered to notice -- "to be born on the site of Allegheny," which is what they called the North Side back then. He was a leading citizen who served in the state militia; when Allegheny City was chartered as a separate municipality in 1840, he became its first mayor. And when he laid out the War Streets a few years later, he named them after the just-completed conflict.
Robinson's father had been given a tract of land in the heart of the North Side for his service in the Revolutionary War. Up until the 1840s, it had been used to house livestock, but Robinson saw opportunity to capitalize on Allegheny's burgeoning population. He laid out the street grid for a new housing development in 1848, just as the Mexican-American War was winding down. In a burst of patriotism, he named the new streets after famous battle sites and generals. Palo Alto Street is named after the first battle of the Mexican War; Resaca Place after the second -- the battle of Resaca de la Palma. Monterrey and Buena Vista were battle sites as well, the latter being perhaps the decisive conflict of the war. Taylor Street pays homage to Zachary Taylor, the general (and later president) who led the American Army in its Mexican campaign.