Welcome to Livingston County’s Bicentennial GeoTrail!
My name is Find R. Fox. I’ll be your guide to super-sleuthing the hides at these amazing, historical locations all around our beautiful 200-year-old county!
To make your travel through history a bit easier, imagine yourself in a Time Machine (your best mode of transportation will do). Set the dial (your gps unit) to the first year (coordinates) listed below, check the waypoints for Parking and push the navigate button! Whirl your way there then switch your coordinates as needed to navigate to the geocache to sniff out the container and sign the log sheet. Good Luck & Enjoy the journey!!
Please visit during daylight hours only!
Listen and you can almost hear the stories this old building could tell. The clanging bell to signal the start of school… the happy voices of children at play in the schoolyard… the quiet hum of students reciting lessons to their teachers. This is District #5 Union School. In 1820, James and William Wadsworth donated this land to remain forever a site for a schoolhouse or other educational purposes. Built in 1838, this cobblestone building, originally in a shape of a cross, was the second school on the site. The exterior fence surrounding the school yard kept roaming cattle from entering the school yard and could be entered via two large turnstiles. Initially 64 boys and 38 girls attended the school and boasted a 215-volume library.
Since then, this building has seen three major additions. The first was in 1871 to the southwest, the second was in 1916 to the southeast, and the third was in 1968 when a large board and batten wing to the rear of the building was constructed for carriages and large equipment. The Historical Society did extensive cobblestone repair work 1999-2000 and again in 2008. More recently, renovations were done to make this structure handicapped accessible.
Cobblestone architecture in the United States is peculiar to western New York. The walls of cobblestone buildings were built of small stones, known as cobbles, which were formed from larger rocks broken by glaciers and ground smooth as they were carried below the moving ice. The cobbles were laid in horizontal courses, with the stones projecting beyond the mortar joints, and square cut red or gray stone quoins at the exterior corners. The courses are typically either 3 or 4 per quoin, with the quoins strengthening the corners and stabilize the mass. The cobblestones project slightly from the wall so that in sunlight, each rounded stone will have a highlighted and shaded area and will also cast a shadow.
This 1838 cobblestone structure is a contributing structure within the Geneseo National Historic Landmark District and became the Livingston County Museum in 1932, when the school moved to a new facility. The first museum, a log cabin built in 1895, still stands in its original location in the Village Park in Geneseo. In 1932, this District # 5 school closed its doors and the Holcomb School opened (the present Welles Building on SUNY Geneseo Campus).
The Livingston County Historical Society’s Museum houses 200 years of stories and collections from towns in Livingston County (Avon, Caledonia, Conesus, Geneseo, Groveland, Leicester, Lima, Livonia, Mt. Morris, North Dansville, Nunda, Ossian, Portage, Sparta, Springwater, York , West Sparta).
Source: https://www.livingstoncountyhistoricalsociety.com/schoolhouse-story
Thank you to the LMalone and CMalone for their assistance in hiding this geocache! Thank you to Livingston County Historical Society for permission to place this geocache!
This is an easy Letterbox cache designed for geocachers to learn about the Cobblestone School. You are looking for a Lock-n-Lock box that is big enough to hold small items to trade or trackables. Please look for the cache during daytime hours only. Happy caching!
Please replace the stamp and the stamp pad back in the geocache container, as it is part of the Letterbox setup and is NOT swag.
This cache is 1 of 36 caches comprising the Livingston County Bicentennial GeoTrail (LivCo200) placed in the summer of 2021 in honor of Livingston County’s Bicentennial by members of the local geocaching group called the Bee Hive. For more information about Livingston County’s Bicentennial, visit the County Historian’s Bicentennial web page on the Livingston County New York website at https://www.livingstoncounty.us/1115/County-Bicentennial
