This tiny pocket park may be set up for a different sport today, but just across the street a bit from this cache, 120+ years ago, this was the epicenter of a trendy new winter activity for the well-to-do imported from Canada: tobogganing.
The precursor to bobsledding (and of course just kids sledding down hills), tobogganing was at the time an exciting new pastime for people bored indoors in winter. Operated by the Essex County Country Club as a way to make a few bucks in the winter months, this toboggan run ran down the hill from close to Gregory Avenue a little south of Mt. Pleasant Ave. An article in the New York Times in December, 1890 talked about the Essex County Country Club’s Winter Carnival, which kicked off the tobogganing season with a party for 500 guests using 150 sleds:
“The track was lighted up with electric lamps, but additional light was given out by numerous bonfires placed at points along the slide and by fireworks, which were burned in generous quantities at the top of the hill.” A team of Country Club “toboggan boys” (many of them golf caddies getting some winter work) were on hand to pull the sleds back up to the top of the hill after each run.
The slide was approximately 1,200 feet long, with “a grade of about 30 degrees the first 500 feet, then a slight incline, a level, [another drop] and a small hill at the end to check the toboggan,” according to an 1885 article in “Outing.”
The toboggan run of course melted and had to be rebuilt each year with different specs. One of the illustrations below, from 1886 and reprinted in “Four Centuries of Sport in America 1490-1890” by Herbert Manchester, described the slide as being “1,004 feet long and only about four feet in width, and the toboggans were steered with the feet. The club dress for men was of colored wool, while the ladies wore blanket costumes in gay colors. In the evening when the slide was lighted with many lights it was said to present an animated and picturesque scene.”
This illustration, from Harper’s Weekly on February 14, 1891, called it the “Orange Toboggan Slide.”
The photo below, taken ca. 1900, shows another rather elaborate toboggan run down nearby Hazel Avenue. (Note the lack of anything but open fields around the run—including the Hazel Avenue Elementary School, not yet built, which now would occupy the right side of this pic.).
The most ridiculous part: In this 1900 photo, they’ve got all this beautiful snow for sledding, but they go to all this trouble to build a planked slide to sled above it! Makes no sense to me…
Enough history, now for the cache! You’re looking for a small, camouflaged spice container, with room inside for small trinkets. There isn’t much room for wandering, so it should be relatively easy as long as you can dodge muggles who are here to play tennis. A rose compass geocoin for the FTF!
Congrats to Geocaching 4 Life for the FTF!