There is nothing better than a good road trip: driving down the open road, eating at tiny roadside diners, going 150 miles out of the way to take a selfie in front of … the Peachoid water tower! Oh Say, can you see … me with the world’s largest frying pan?
This geotrail honors those unique, odd, bizarre, fun, historic, campy, weird, and just downright interesting roadside attractions in North and South Carolina. The caches aren’t meant to be hard, it is a power-trail after all. None of the caches are hidden at the posted locations - but answer the question correctly and you will have a working set of coordinates. All of the hides are preform bottles.
It’s not often talked about, but it’s an unsettling fact that the military had some trouble keeping those precious nuclear bombs in the air while transporting them during the Cold War. Some were lost and never recovered; sometimes the aircraft carrying them would crash. On at least a couple of occasions, the bomb was accidentally dropped on American soil. Luckily for South Carolina residents the bomb wasn’t armed with its nuclear rod. In 1958, the emergency pin holding the bomb was accidentally pushed and the B-47 dropped its payload on the Palmetto State. The 26-kiloton Mark 6 inert bomb created a crater that was 75 feet across and 30 feet deep.
The property passed through several owners afterward, but none bothered to fill in the hole. It remained an obscure destination until the accident's 50th anniversary, when exhibits were set up at the crater and a state historical marker was erected by the highway. An overgrown path leads from an abandoned trailer park into a pine thicket to the crater. Fifty years of vegetation has reduced the formerly impressive pit to a leafy depression in the woods, filled with water when it rain. A tiny observation deck stands at its edge, a safe spot for shutterbugs. In a nearby clearing is a large plywood cutout of a bomb -- the actual size of the massive Mark 6 -- pointed nose-down to the ground. A canopied kiosk displays copies of local newspaper stories from 1958.
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Where is South Carolina's Ground Zero?
A. Easley, SC - 145
B. Brittons Neck, SC - 777
C. Mars Bluff, SC - 675
D. Chester, SC - 468