Welcome to the Farewell to Finder’s Fest geo-art, brought to you by the Forest Minions! This series celebrates weird and unusual things throughout the Sunshine State. Please do not go to the posted locations. Rather, solve the challenging quiz found at the bottom of each page, for the final location. For the letterbox caches, please leave the stamp in the cache. They are not trade items. For the discerning traveler, we’ve included the GPS coordinates for these bizarre locations, when we were able to establish them.
Key West’s Old Cemetery – Location 24.5447, -81.8043
The Spanish discovered stacks of Indian skulls on the island of Key West and called the place “Cayo Hueso” which means “Isle of bones.” It’s a fitting name when you consider that human bones seem to be scattered all over this island town. The first public cemetery in Key West was established in the sand dunes of Whitehead Point. In 1846 a hurricane destroyed this cemetery washing bodies from the graves and depositing bones in the sands along the beach. Another early cemetery was the Key West Post Military Cemetery containing 468 burials, which were removed in 1927 and transported by tugboat to Pensacola where they were reinterred in the Fort Barrancas National Military Cemetery.
Small graveyards and lone tombstones have been found all around the island but the one that has become a major tourist attraction is Key West’s Old Cemetery. This unusual graveyard was started in 1847 on nineteen acres of land in the heart of town and contains somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 graves. The exact number cannot be documented because of so many unmarked graves, lost records, and Key West’s bizarre burial customs. The first thing a visitor to Key West’s Old Cemetery will notice are the above ground, white-washed tombs stacked one on top of the other, some three or four tiers high. The same thing has been done underground where family members are stacked one on top of the other.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: How long does the average person spend sitting on a toilet in a lifetime?
A: 1 day = N29° 29.331' W81° 48.451'
B: 42 days = N29° 29.321' W81° 48.451'
C: 1 year = N29° 29.311' W81° 48.451'