Good news! For 2018, we upgraded our geotrail to an official Geocaching GeoTour! Learn more about Pennsylvania's Clearfield County GeoTour, which offers a series of 5 related geocaching adventures: Forgotten Clearfield, Hometown Heroes, Waterways, Cemeteries, and Parks and Recreation. Codes are hidden within each cache. Collect 25 codes from across all 5 series and you qualify for a collectible prize. If you complete all 5 and have your passport validated, you can receive a trackable geocoin.
Clearfield County is full of old and historical locations, buildings, and remnants of by gone eras. Come and cache Clearfield County to learn about its rich history through ghost towns, abandoned cemeteries, Civil War uprisings and its rich Native American presence.
John DuBois was born in Oswego, N.Y., in 1809. He started in the lumber business at age 15 borrowing money from his family to buy a thousand acres of land. This led him to the developing and building of a large logging business near Williamsport, where today there is still a town called DuBois town.
When John DuBois began to tire of his lumber, milling, and iron mill operations in the Williamsport area, he started to look around for other land to buy. He came west to Clearfield County for the first time about 1842, when he was 33. At that time he met the area’s only resident George Shaffer, who was living in an old logging cabin. He returned to the area again in 1871 to see George Shaffer. But Shaffer had died and now living in his original house was a man named John Rumbarger, who also played a large role in the founding of DuBois.
Monument Hill, overlooking the Penn State DuBois Campus, has a history stretching back to May 5, 1886, the date of the death of John DuBois. The "Hill" is a single burial plot, which then looked down upon the DuBois Mansion. It is the resting place of John DuBois and later had a monument spire erected over the grave. DuBois had requested to be buried on the hill with his face toward the town. The funeral procession was even larger, numbering over 1,500, with nearly 1,000 gathering at the grave site, and 250 people attending the burial service. Newspaper reports from the time reported the casket was encased in an underground tomb of brick and cement. The interest of the public in the area declined over the years. Early in the 21st Century the hillside was cleared and the memorial is now visible again. It stands as a monument to the man who gave DuBois its name.