The history of Rhinelander is very closely tied to logging and railroads, so we wanted to place a cache at this spot that highlights that fact. Beginning in 1858, logs harvested from the forest north of here were driven down river to the many sawmills in town. In 1893 the water was too low to accomplish that, so a new narrow guage railroad was built near here to get the logs to the mills. The Thunder Lake Lumber Co. Railroad ran from 1893 until it was abandoned in 1941 when all the logs had been brought down to the mills and there was no more business for the line.
(Woodcarverdan originally had a cache here. Thanks to him for reminding us of the local history - and especially for allowing us to the use the pictures on the cache page that he originally shared.)
The 5 spot is one of the original steam engines that ran on the railroad. It is now over at the Rhinelander Railroad Museum in Pioneer Park on Oneida Avenue.
The history of the 5 spot
If you happen to bring along your watercraft, you might want to take a short paddle over to one of our other caches - Thunder Lake Island GC2D2Y1.