When Men Were Men Multi-Cache

Most of us take a trip up these steps once and talk about it for days upon days. How strenuous it was or how it hurt our knee, back, or other. Think about walking up and down these steps every single day no matter the time of year or weather. Carrying tools and supplies. Puts it into perspective, huh!? This cache will not take you to the top of the steps. However, we highly recommend it!  

There are actually 1,043 steps in the Thousand Steps Trail. They were created in 1936 as a means of transportation to work for the miners high up on the mountain.

The mining history in this area is very rich as sand was the most popular resource mined from Jacks Mountain. Mining for sand started on Jacks Mountain and in the narrows around 1900 by Harbison Walker Corporation and it continued until about 1950. The sand mined from the mountain was used for silica bricks which were heat resistant and at one point, Jacks Mountain was known as "The Silica Brick Capital of the World." Both sides of "The Narrows" on Jacks Mountain were loaded with railroad tracks and at one point six inclined planes existed. 

Jacks Narrows which is cut by the Juniata River also housed some of the most famous transportation means in the history of east coast transportation at one time or another. The PA Turnpike, Pennsylvania Canal, William Penn Highway, and Pennsylvania Railroad all passed through Jacks Narrows at the base of this mountain. This goes to show how important a roll Thousand Steps and Jacks Mountain had to the early 1900s industrial boom. 



THE CACHE: This is a simple, two stage cache. The listed coords will take you to a kiosk with a information sign. Read the sign to determine the needed coordinates to get to stage two, the final. You will need to go up at least to the 200th step.

Final Location: N40 23.ABC  W77 54.DEF 

"Harbison-Walker utilized quarries on both sides of the Narrows between 1900 and ????."

Use that second year in the above quoted sentence to gain the needed coords.

The year minus 1327 = ABC
The year minus 1225 = DEF

The cache container is a 50 cal ammo can.

This hide was a group placement. 74vwBusFamily, TheGeoSleuth, RNescape, and petroypa70 were the hiding crew. We chose the final location because it looked as if it was used as a active incline location. You will notice a old utility pole base, rock foundations, and a cemented foundation near the stream. Take time to soak in the history at the final location. It was a very fun group hide!

The cache is starting off with a logbook/pens, a Geocaching Info card, a unactivated 15th Anniversary GeoCoin, Personal Signature Coins from the hiders, glow rings for the kids, a couple small cache containers, paracord keychain, outdoors keychain, firestarter, a compass, and a waypoint packet. Enjoy!