Growing up in southern Oregon was a wonderful experience. Small town living, knowing your neighbors, having four distinct seasons, lots of outdoor actitives, summer baseball, fall football, the list goes on and on. The main industry was timber, both harversting trees, replanting them, and sending them off to build homes, offices, fences. One of the hazards of living in country surrounded by millions of board feet of timber was fire. Whether it was caused by campfires not being extinguished, or weather- related lighting strikes, intentionally set by arsonists, or by acts of war. Those are the reasons that the site for this virtual geocache subject was built.
The coordinates take you to the parking area for the Siskiyou Smokejumper Base Museum. This was one of the first smokejumper bases in the United States, opening in 1943. This base was established as a response to various attempts by the Japanese during WW II to ignite massive forest fires throughout western forests, a strategy intended to disrupt America’s war effort by causing panic in the general population. (One did explode in Bly, Oregon on May 5th, 1945, killing 6 people, including 5 children).
The Siskiyou Smokejumper Base continued operation after the war and evolved over the years as one of four primary bases located in Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. While in operation its crews were dispatched to thousands of lightning and human-caused fires throughout the western states, saving millions in resource damage and fire suppression costs. Growing up in Cave Junction, it was not unusual for local college students to make smokejumping their summer job to pay for school. Several of my high school classmates did just that (not me, I joined the Navy).
In 1981, the USFS closed the base after 38 years of continious operation, in order to consolidate resources for more effective managment of fire fighting resources. It was relocated to Redmond, Oregon. In 2006, the former base and current museum were placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The site is available year round, during daylight hours, so you can view the buildings and informational displays. From March 15th to November 15th, the museum is open, so you can see the dispatch office, and the oldest exsisting parachute loft.
To log this virtual geocache, you must answer the following questions:
1) Whose name is on the brass plaque on the flag pole?
2) Which Apollo astronaut was a smokejumper, and what year?
3) Who were the Triple Nickels?
4) There are two planes that were used in transporting smokejumpers, one silver, one white. How many round windows are on each plane?
5) What was the Moon Tree?
10/15/2022: Several cachers have said the it was not possible to view the airplanes there to answer question #4. I stopped by the museum today and verified with the curator that it is okay to go in and inspect the planes. There is a small gate to the left of the plaque about the Triple Nickels. The main gate on the right is intended for vehicles which is why there are warning signs.
Feel free to log the cache when you are at the site, but answers must be submited to me via the email/message link at the top of the cache page. DO NOT include the answers to any of the questions in your log! If not submitted within a reasonable amount of time, the log will be deleted.
Virtual Rewards 3.0 - 2022-2023
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between March 1, 2022 and March 1, 2023. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 3.0 on the Geocaching Blog.