The cache is NOT at the posted coordinates. There is no need to go to the posted location, even if you can. (And no problem if you can't.) Solve the puzzle to find the coordinates.
Women played a critical role in World War II by decoding intercepted messages of the enemies. In the search for highly qualified women, a number of the women code breakers were recruited from women’s colleges. In other cases, educational institutions suffered casualties. Mount Vernon Seminary, later known as Mount Vernon College fell into the latter category.
As the Navy’s WWII code-breaking operation expanded, so did its need for space. Other military operations had found school campuses well suited to their needs, and the Navy followed suit. Its sights landed on Mount Vernon Seminary, then located near Ward Circle in Tenleytown (Washington DC). The Navy acquired the campus (presently the site of Dept. of Homeland Security).
“...Mount Vernon educated daughters of diplomats, politicians, cabinet members, and other eminent Washingtonians, including Alexander Graham Bell. In a kind of circular irony, Ada Comstock, the Radcliffe president who helped launch the naval code-breaking program, had studied at Mount Vernon. The school occupied some thirty-eight acres on an elevated point from which it was possible to see the Pentagon in Virginia—even the Blue Ridge Mountains, beyond it—and Fort Meade in Maryland. The main building was a refectory of Georgian red brick, with cloisters closed in that “permit the girls” “freedom for exercise and are secluded from public view,” as a school publication put it. Of course, a facility that shielded its girls from public view would be perfect for shielding code breakers.”
Liza Mundy, Code Girls (Hachette Book Group, Inc. 2017), p. 697-699.
Left homeless by the acquisition of its property in 1942, the Mount Vernon Seminary was forced to relocate. Following a temporary landing in Spring Valley, in 1944, the school received compensation from the government for the acquisition of its former campus and used the money to purchase a new home on Foxhall Road. It transitioned from a six-year preparatory school to a preparatory school and junior college, and then in 1976, it became an accredited four-year college for women. Alas, in the late 1990s it closed its doors.
In an ironic, coincidental conjoining of nomenclature, roughly 238 years after Mount Vernon was acquired by George Washington, Mount Vernon College was acquired by George Washington University. The campus now houses student dormitory and classes associated with GWU’s Columbian College of Arts & Sciences and some athletic facilities. It is now known as George Washington University’s Mount Vernon Campus.
I really intend to place a traditional, easy hide someday; but this location was just begging for a coded puzzle cache. Luckily, I found a coded message that George Washington’s spies sent to him that provided the right pass word: 272 Bring your own writing utensil. The cache should be wheelchair accessible. No need to trespass on private property.
Plug your answer into Certitude and you will receive the coordinates for the final location.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.
Congratulations to RDip for FTF, 50 minutes after publication!
Beware of muggles during rush hour and the hours of school drop-off and pick-up. Further, the nearby parking is reserved for school use 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and for church use 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sundays; but there is generally ample parking outside of those hours, particularly in the evening (unless there’s a school event in progress). However if you are doing other area catches, you can walk there from the final of GC8YW3E. The nearest public transportation is the D6 Metrobus, which has stops within a 1/2 mile of the cache location.
References:
Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vernon_Seminary_and_College
Liza Mundy, Code Girls (Hachette Book Group, Inc. 2017)
Mount Vernon.org website