Cache Is Not At The Posted Coordinates
Mr. Toot is the mascot not only of the North Iowa Band Festival, but also for Mason City as a whole. His image has appeared on everything from T-Shirts to business cards to city light poles. Now his image also appears on the geocaching map just south of Mason City Iowa. Each of these puzzles will include a fact or story in theme with the art series. Some may also include a question or two for you to answer correctly to find the coordinates.
Music Man Trivia
The first number in the show is called Rock Island, presumably because the salesmen are crossing into Iowa from Rock Island, Illinois, which is right across the Mississippi River from Iowa. The first railroad bridge across the Mississippi was built to connect Rock Island, Illinois, with Davenport, Iowa, by the Rock Island Railroad Company. A few weeks after the completion of the bridge, the steamboat Effie Afton cleared the open drawbridge, then turned and crashed into the bridge and burst into flames. The owner of the boat sued the railroad, which was defended by a young Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided, in 1866, in favor of the railroad. By the time of our story, the railroad was now part of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad (C.R.I.&P.), which ran from Chicago to Denver and Colorado Springs, and to Tucumcari, New Mexico, where it interchanged with the Southern Pacific for trains to and from California. Today, Rock Island IL, Moline IL, East Moline IL, Davenport IA, and Bettendorf IA, are collectively known as the Quad Cities.
Bettendorf was originally a small suburb of Davenport, but in 1948, it began to grow to reach equal status with the others, so that it was proposed to rename the area the Quint Cities, but that name never caught on.
After World War II, the C.R.I.&P. was in financial difficulty. The Union Pacific (UP) attempted to merge it, but the merger was held up in hearings by the ICC for about 10 years. At the end of that time, the financial state C.R.I.&P. was so bad the UP no longer wanted it. It went bankrupt, and various railroads bought most of the pieces. Most of what remains of the C.R.I.&P. today is part of the UP
N 43 05.064 W 93 06.167
The town of River City was based on Meredith Willson’s home town of Mason City, Iowa. Mason City is commonly referred to as the “River City”, as the city grew up centered on the Winnebago River. But if the train trip originated in Rock Island IL, the River City in this story seems to be located in Davenport, the first city in Iowa across the Mississippi from Illinois. But another possibility is that the train entered Iowa on the Rock Island line from the north, from Minnesota, probably originating in St Paul, and arrived in the real “River City”, that is, Mason City. Mason City is about 35 miles from the border, so the train would have been traveling in Iowa for an hour or more before stopping in River City.
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As of November 1st, 2018 in order to make this part of the GeoArt safer the final coordinates have changed. If you have solved coordinates prior to this date they are no longer valid.