Ghostly Tappan Traditional Cache

Another very cool but kind of erie spot. Found it while viewing the Geocache app map.

Tappan was platted on March 4, 1837 by John Marshall (1787 - 1877) who was a business man & an immigrant from Ireland. He never lived in Tappan though & died in Hancock County, OH. The town was originally called Franklin, named after the township, but it had to be changed when the post office was established in 1840 because there was already another Franklin post office in Ohio. It was renamed Tappan after Benjamin Tappan who was a Harrison County judge from 1816 - 1823 & then a U.S. Senator from 1839 - 1845. The town of Tappan only had 4 families in 1840 but quickly grew to it's peak population of 171 in 1860. It was simply considered to be a post office town by the state but in 1875 Tappan also had a steam powered grist & saw mill, hotel, a school, blacksmith, shoe shop, tannery, a doctor, two general stores, & two churches, as well as around 50 houses for the residents. In 1933 leaders of the Muskingum River Concervancy Project decided that a dam should be built on the Little Stillwater Creek that ran through Tappan. Construction began in 1935 & was completed in 1938. The residents of Tappan were paid small amounts of money to move & some didn't have enough time or funds to move all of their belongings before the town met it's watery demise & was submerged by Lake Tappan in 1938. A couple of other nearby towns were submerged too including Laceyville & another town that was founded by freed slaves who traveled north after the Cival War. Today, Lake Tappan is a nice place to visit for a day trip or while on vacation but it's sad that the town was considered to be expendable while larger towns that had railroads on the north & south sides of the lake were spared. Tappan wasn't expendable to the residents that lived there. It was where their homes & lives were. The Tappan Cemetery was said to have been moved just north of the lake on Mill Hill Rd. (Local Hwy 215) but findagrave.com only has one know internment listed there. We suspect that scores of residents are still buried in the old Tappan Cemetery beneath the waters of Lake Tappan as the town existed for over a hundred years. People who scuba dive in the lake these days say that it's an extremely eerie experience & you can't go very far without almost running into a house, mailbox, tractor, barn, & other buildings. The Muskingum River Conservancy District still owns the lake & surrounding land. There's a historical marker for Tappan on the Tappan - Monrovian Trails Scenic Byway (U.S. 250) in a parking lot for the lake just south of the intersection of Mill Hill Rd. & another one for Laceyville on U.S. 250 near the southeast side of the lake. There's also a few old homestead foundations & remnants from the old towns in the woods around the lake. The town of Tappan is like the Atlantis of Ohio & despite being underwater, it's probably one of the most well preserved ghost towns in the state. 

The Cache is a Small container hidden towards the back of the Cemetery. Watch where you walk it is some rough terrain for sure. It is hard telling if there are actual graves here or just markers. Please be respectful either way. Day light caching only. Bring a writing utensil.