This cache is one of several caches on Mountain Charlie Road and Glenwood Drive. It is only a few feet from pavement.
You can read about Mountain Charlie, perhaps the most colorful figure of the Santa Cruz Mountains during the second half of the 1800s, below.
Drive this road with extreme caution, paying attention to the curves and washouts. If you like steep curvy back roads you will love this one!
Charles Henry “Mountain Charlie” McKiernan was born in County Leitrim, Ireland in 1825. He came to California in 1849 to participate in the Gold Rush after serving with the British Army in New Zealand.
Charlie made his fortune at the Trinity River Diggings near Murphys after which he bought a string of 15 pack mules and worked as a pack mule teamster between Trinidad on the California coast and the Weaverville mines. On his second journey he was driven off by the local natives who ran off his mules after which he moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains. There in 1852 he found what he considered to be the ideal piece of land on which he built a cabin out of whip sawed redwood and began to raise sheep and cattle that sold for $6-$8 per head. Charlie also hunted deer whose meat was shipped to a bustling San Francisco.
On May 8,1854 south of his cabin Charlie and a friend named Taylor while hunting were attacked by a Grizzly Bear that sprang from a thicket. Grizzlies were plentiful in the region in the mid-1800s which is why they feature on the California state flag. Both Charlie and Taylor fired, but the bear grabbed Mountain Charlie, biting him on the arms and face. A piece of skull 4 inches square was bitten from over his left eye and nose. Charlie requested that a doctor in San Jose apply a plate of silver to the area of McKiernan’s missing skull. The plate did not heal well and an abscess appeared about a year later; it was removed with considerable pain. Charlie was left disfigured by the bear attack – wearing his hat low over his head - but went on to live another 38 years passing in 1892.
In 1862, Charlie married Barbara Berricke Kelly, an Irish nurse who cared for him after his third operation. They went on to have seven children.
In 1858 Charlie and Hiram Scott of Scotts Valley were awarded a contract by the Santa Cruz Turnpike Company for the amount of $6000 to build a road from Scott’s house to the summit. Later known as the McKiernan Toll Road, in 1878 the road became part of the Santa Cruz County road system and Charlie was paid $600 to abandon it.
An exceptionally large redwood tree near Glenwood is named after Mountain Charlie. The tree was over 300 feet high, but now stands at about 260 feet high and is 60 feet in circumference. Mountain Charlie wanted to cut both this tree and its neighbor known then as the King and Queen of the Forest, but the Queen gave him so much trouble that he let the King stand. Charlie’s motto was "RIGHT WRONGS NOBODY." You can read about his further adventures here http://www.mountaincharlie1850.org/mountain_charlie_story.html
Mountain Charlie Road – Glenwood Drive caches, North to South:
Bear-ly Hidden by emorydunn https://coord.info/GC4EN1R
Tank U! by DragonsWest https://coord.info/GC57GD0
Summit Travel Lodge by Ullii https://coord.info/GC6Y963
Mountain Charlie Road by 50sumtin https://coord.info/GC18WR4
Mountain Charlie Bear Fight by bullit https://coord.info/GC1E9A7
Old Japanese Road by peigimccann
Madrone by peigimccann
Old Growth by peigimccann
Historic Glenwood by Nkinney https://coord.info/GC1DD1J
Mountain Charlie Big Tree by 50sumtin https://coord.info/GC125GW