Please read the Owner Maintenance logs from 7/26/23 and 10/11/20 for information about the container and a spoiler picture. Container is no longer an ammo can.
I have been to this area several times, most recently on my mountain bike a couple of days after Xmas. I used to spend most of my summers running the trails here and on various other trails in the Loch Raven/Gunpowder Falls area. I was resting here on Thursday and realized what a great place this was for a cache. It took some research, but it turns out I was not the first one with that idea. There was a cache here for several years (GC15C7B), placed by Kention3, his only hide. The cache was archived on March 5, 2016, exactly one year before I found my first cache. The last find was on 4/25/15, followed by a series of DNFs. Time to get this back in play.
Glen Ellen castle was built in 1833 by Robert Gilmor III. A 3 story Gothic revival mansion, it had towers on three corners. The castle was built to resemble a castle owned by Sir Walter Scott in Scotland, called Abbotsford. The castle was named after Gilmor's wife, Ellen, with whom he had 9 sons and 2 daughters. Gilmor hired a famous New York Architect, Alexander Jackson Davis, to design and supervise the building of the mansion. The home and surrounding buildings cost about $175,000 when built, equivalent to about $2 million today. Robert Gilmor's son, Harry Gilmor, served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, mostly under the command of General Jubal Early. In July of 1864, after spending the night at his father's home, Major Harry Gilmor raided the general store at Jerusalem Mills before moving on to destroy a railroad bridge across the Gunpowder River.
In the 90 or so years that Glen Ellen was inhabited, the home looked out on farmlands and a valley which was cut by a small creek connected to the Gunpowder River. By 1900, the growing city of Baltimore needed more water, and the city began to focus on the lands surrounding Glen Ellen. When the large dam was built in 1921, the reservoir was up to the front yard of Glen Ellen. What appears as a hill on an old map of the property became an island, and many of the outer buildings were covered by water. For a time the city, which had purchased the property before the damming, considered using the mansion as a resort for poor women from Baltimore. But the building couldn't have a septic system because it was so close to the water, so Glen Ellen went unused and began to decay. During Prohibition, a still was set up in the building, and Glen Ellen started to become a problem for the city. So in 1929, after much of its lumber was removed, Glen Ellen was dynamited to the ground.
Below are some photographs of the home.
The photo above was a few years before it was destroyed.
I am obligated to inform you that this cache is available from dawn to dusk.
Congratulations to AllIsVanity and GnomeGCer for co-FTF.
UPDATE 4/9/2019: The container used for the cache that used to be here was found on 4/6/2019 by jimb0slic3, a new cacher. The place where it was found is at least 225 feet from the posted coords, and it was virtually out in the open, hanging half out of a stone wall. Mysterious. The ammo can seemed viable, so I cleaned it out, replaced the swag that was still in decent shape, and put the container I had placed here on 12/29/2018 inside the ammo can. Had to move the hide due to the size of the container. Please re hide very well so as to avoid curious eyes.