Courier's End Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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The cache is near a memorial for a postal courier who lost his life near here in 1879. The memorial is a simple fenced tree with a wooden plaque.
From Hwy 395, turn onto Glass Creek Road which is across from the Crestview Maintenance station. Take the first dirt road on the right and head to coordinates. Watch for ATVs and dirt bike riders.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
This is commonly misidentified as the creed of our mail carriers, but actually it is just the inscription found on the General Post Office in New York City at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street.
Here's how the official Web site of the U.S. Postal Service describes the origin of the inscription.
This inscription was supplied by William Mitchell Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, the architects who designed the New York General Post Office. Kendall said the sentence appears in the works of Herodotus and describes the expedition of the Greeks against the Persians under Cyrus, about 500 B.C. The Persians operated a system of mounted postal couriers, and the sentence describes the fidelity with which their work was done. Professor George H. Palmer of Harvard University supplied the translation, which he considered the most poetical of about seven translations from the Greek.
In December of 1879, Williams Haines, a postal worker, was reported missing during a severe winter storm while transporting mail between Mammoth City and Kings Ranch. His body and mailbags were recovered near the bottom of what is now known as Deadman Summit.
Many years ago, my wife spotted the fence around this tree as we were heading down Deadman Summit heading into Mammoth. We pulled off the road to explore and found a wooden plaque with this story. In 2004, the Bodie Chapter No. 64 of E Clampus Vitus placed the monument on 395 which gives more detail about the history of the name Deadman Summit. As you can see, this sign has been rehabbed a bit, but is probably the same we saw way back then. We finally decided it was time for more geocachers to appreciate the efforts of our postal service to keep the mail getting to its destination through the years.
Note: While my Garmin Dakota pegged the above Lat. and Long. The first two people to find the geo. wound up just across the dirt road from the caged tree. Google Earth puts the location as N 37° 45.404 W 118° 59.335 which is pretty close to what Tom4props had it. Either way - should be an easy find as not too many caged trees in the area.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Abg sne sebz zrzbevny