This cache was previousdly located at the Crab Lake boat landing, but I moved it to avoid confusion over property lines. That cache "WINEGAR REFLECTIONS SERIES- Constable Rutherford" has been archived and this one will now be active.
This cache is located along the Presque Isle Pipke Park Wilderness Trail. Enter the road from Hwy W and follow the gravel road to the west, until you see the bridge which marks the entrance to the trail. The cache is located about 1/10 mile north, just a short distance from the trail.
This is the brief story of my great-uncle, George Rutherford…
August 12th, 1926, probably made that day the bloodiest, most violent day in the history of the Lakeland area, even a Lakeland area that was used to spurts of vigilante or frontier justice in the 1920’s, when hastily deputized lawmen or hastily authorized posses’ had little awareness of “due process”, and shot first and asked questions later.
Winegar in prohibition era 1926 was a busy sawmill town, employing many men in town and even more in the logging camps outside. The hilly countryside, somewhat akin to their native Kentucky, had attracted a number of Kentuckians- “Kentucks” they were locally called- and a few of the Kentucks had found the privacy of these hills an ideal place to practice an art that had brought them from their Appalachian hill-home: Moonshining.
The mill company did not take kindly to this moonshining. For some reason, neither did the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which had sprung up around Winegar and was surprisingly powerful.
That fateful Thursday afternoon, George Rutherford, a lumber company locomotive engineer, part time Methodist preacher, Ku Klux Klan leader, and for five months now, the local constable, hiked out toward one of the stills on the southwest corner of Mermaid lake. He had his wife with him.
Reports still vary today about the reason for his errand- whether he was going out to serve an arrest warrant on murder fugitive William Stanley, whom he expected to find and reportedly may have arrested before, only to have him escape, or whether he had been promised a week’s vacation by the mill superintendent if he closed down the Mermaid Lake still, and was on his way to do that.
Seeing smoke and hearing the sounds from afar of wood-chopping and closer of a fire crackling, Rutherford loaded his rifle, told his wife to wait, and stole the 85 feet to the still, which was situated in a little 16 by 20 foot clearing. He eluded the watcher or two that apparently had been stationed at the clearing, one Jerry Brandenburg, and perhaps William Stanley.
Just pulling the fire from the still or getting ready to make the moonshine, was Charles Boring. Seeing Rutherford, he grabbed for the gun he kept handy. Spotting Boring’s quick move, the constable ordered “Give me your gun!” and repeated “Give me that gun!”
As he repeated himself, in probably what was the last sentence he was ever to speak, he shot Boring in the hand as Boring made for his gun.
Boring shot back twice, one bullet blasting out much of Rutherford’s brain after boring in just three-quarters of an inch above the left eye.
On the highest knob of Winegar’s brand-new cemetery, the martyred Rutherford’s new grave initiated the new burial ground, and his friends buried him facing southward, so he could face the spot where he had died.
You are looking for a bison tube attached to an appropriate "law enforcement" themed host.
Permission for this cache placement was obtained from Scott Mcpherson, President, Presque Isle Chamber of Commerce.