Leesylvania State Park is open daily from sunrise to sunset. For more information on entrance fees, park rules, hours of operation, or to learn the history of the park please visit this LINK to go the the Leesylvania State Park webpage.
This cache is placed in a Virginia State Park with permission, so absolutely no night caching.
Leesylvania State Park, the ancestral home of the Lee family, sits along the Potomac River, south of Washington, DC. Today the park offers a range of recreational activities and beautiful views of the river, one of the Chesapeake's largest tributaries. But the park also has a long and fascinating history.
Situated on "Freestone Point," referring to the sandstone which early settlers took from the property for building purposes, the park lands were once part of Leesylvania Plantation. Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, a revolutionary war colonel and father of Robert E. Lee, was born here. The Lee mansion burned in the 18th century, but the family gravesite remains, as do the ruins of a later 19th century house. Visitors can also see the site of a Confederate gun emplacement from the Civil War.
An Idea for This Little Free Library Was Born
I wanted to place a special geocache at the Visitors center but I didn’t know what that was. So I went ahead put a placeholder cache in its place to hold the spot until I could think something up. When the idea of making an old newspaper box into a little free library was conceived I knew that was the way to go. Lucky for me the head park ranger was excited about this idea as well and quickly gave me a green light.
First thing I had to do was find a paper box. I drove around until I found a bunch on private property. I then asked the establishment if I could remove it stating “the top was broke open, the glass was smashed, and it was full of trash.” The manager gave me the OK and I tossed it in the back seat of my tiny Civic, all the while praying that it didn’t have a wasp nest in it. My wife was happy that I was given permission because she was worried that she would have to bail me out for stealing newspaper boxes.
As soon as got it home unloaded it into my driveway. I grabbed my gloves and went to work pulling all of the trash out, and removing the spiders and egg sacks so they wouldn’t move into my garage. I then borrowed my neighbors deep socket wrench set and removed the top. The coin mechanism had been already been stolen out of it so removing the top was pretty easy. The next day I brought it to work and gave it a good cleaning and removed the inside paper box spring loader. I am lucky to have an understanding boss and a maintenance department who were also eager to help (As long as it didn't interfere with our daily work). Mechanics and welders contributed their time to do the body work and repair the moving parts. Metal had to be bent back, and corrosion had to be sanded out, and severely rusted areas had to be cut out. Rust inhibitor was applied on the bottom (that black stuff), and a "secret" geocache hatch was created.
The door had a massive "finger slamming" action and we spent a lot of time trying to devise ways to make it safer. We tried a few things, but then settled on relieving half of the spring tension to reduce the slamming power of the door. Plexiglass was harder to come by in the days of COVID, but someone had some scrap lying around ready to donate it. After the box was primed the window was installed. I chose this blue color for the base of the box that kind of matched the Virginia State Parks blue from their license plates. After a month or so I brought the box back home, taped off a stencil to spray paint the white trees on the box.
I hand painted the leaves on the box, registered the mounted the little free library plaque, had a the green sign custom made, and found a fun decal on Etsy to pace on the glass. I want to thank the LSP Park Ranger, the manager at Wendy's, my wife, Sneaky_Molly, my parents, my neighbor, and my blue collar crew at work for helping me pull of bringing this geocache library dream to a reality. This was truly a labor of love and a lot of fun to boot. Enjoy!
