Camp Grant West Traditional Cache

This cache is hidden here. It is a large one. A ammo box one. Please feel free to explore our towns and nations history here, we have located this cache by the now football field, beware of muggles, especially in football and baseball/softball season. please use care as its well hidden but if not place back in, it could well be found and looted. We given thanks to the Matton Park district Kurt Stretch and Debbie Crean for once again allowing us to do this cache.

In late spring 1861, then-Capt. Ulysses S. Grant served as a recruitment and training officer for hundreds of prospective Union soldiers in a sprawling camp along the northeast edge of Mattoon. Capt. Grant swore the 21st Illinois Infantry into service at the Mattoon camp in May 1861 and, after being promoted to colonel, served from June to August 1861 as their commander. Grant eventually became commanding general of the Union Army and served as U.S. president from 1869 to 1877. Camp Grant was located on a 90-acre property that was then the Mattoon Union Agricultural Fairgrounds and is now mostly residential neighborhoods between Logan and Sixth streets and Shelby and Piatt avenues. Also, in 1855 giving the area and the nation the above area that would be good for the union, the Terre Haute and Alton railroad came through, leading later to the big four, CCC and St Louis rr and then the NYC railroad, giving them an easy way to transport troops across the nation right here.