Blue Question Mark.
You know the drill: No cache at the posted coordinates, solve the mystery to get the true location and then go find the cache, which is a small lock top style plastic container, hidden along a large fallen tree.
Background:
One day I was looking at some old newspaper clippings and came across this one, "Old Landmark, Hominy Hills Tower, Moved". As I read the article, I wondered if I could figure out where exactly the tower was and where it was moved. Maybe I could visit these locations. Turns out it wasn't that hard for identify both locations, but the more I learned about the story the more fascinating it became. While it's not possible for myself to visit the original location, I have been to the new location.
Fire Tower Watchers can spot smoke up to 20 miles away, by radioing in their bearing to the smoke from two towers, crews on the ground can zero in on the location of the fire. I figured that this would make a fun puzzle! (Lucky you)
History:
I was able to dig up a little more history on the tower. On July 31, 1924, the Hominy Hill Fire tower went into service in the Farmingdale/Colts Neck area on a 307 ft sandy hill sometimes called Throckmorton Hill. Tower Watchman, Evert Tower (yes, that's his last name) manned the station for 20+ years. He noted that the Hominy Hills, 65 feet high, steel tower was the most conspicuous object in Monmouth County and could be seen from practically all the neaby highways. The tower was somewhat of a tourist attraction too, with up to 700 visitors a year through the 1930's.
The fire tower that stood in Hominy Hills until December 16, 1959 when it was dismantle, put on trailers and carried about 40 miles south down Rt 9 to Bear Swamp Hill in Penn State Forest. It replaced the wooden fire tower that was previously there which had burnt down in a forest fire several years earlier (talk about irony). But the fantastic story of the Hominy Hill Fire tower doesn't end there. It was in service for 11 years in its new location atop Bear Swamp Hill, when on January 16, 1971, at 11:35 A.M. a F-105 Thunderchief crashed into the tower destroying it and killing the pilot. The tower was never replaced.
Puzzle:
Your tasks to find the final location are:
- Find the GPS locations of the original tower in Hominy Hills and the new location on Bear Swamp Hill.
- Calculate an Initial bearing of 314.2 ° from where the tower stood in Hominy Hills and an Initial bearing of 21.319 ° from where the town stood in Penn State Forest. The cache is located at the intersection of these lines.
The difficulty rating is for the puzzle and the work needed to find the coordinate. The actual hide is 1.5 stars. You'll need to do some research on your favorite search engine, exhibit good map reading skills, determine somewhat accurate coordinates of the two tower locations, and do some trigonometry and basic math. There are several tools available on the Internet that should get you this information easily and accurately, but again, you'll need to be somewhat Internet savvy.
A fuzzy checker is included
This cache is certified Central Jersey!
