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.
Middle of the road Grave – Location 29.0371, -80.9038
On the beach side in New Smyrna you’ll find a tomb in the middle of Canova Drive. The street is named for actress Judy Canova who had planned at one time to put a trailer park in the area, but the grave belongs to Charles Dummett.
Douglas Dummett came to New Smyrna prior to 1844 and built a house on an Indian mound overlooking the river. Dummett was a sugar merchant, the Justice of the Peace and an orange grower who gets the credit for starting the strain that led to Florida’s most famous citrus. He married a black slave girl and had three daughters and a son, Charles, who was born in 1844. Dummett sent his son to school in the North and in 1860 when Charles was home from school, he was killed while on a hunting trip when his gun accidentally discharged. Douglas Dummett buried his son on the spot where he was killed. For the past century this area has been developed into a residential neighborhood, but Charles Dummett’s tomb still sits on a little island in the middle of Canova Drive.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: How much stout is wasted, globally, in facial hair, every year?
A: 1 pint = N29° 28.268' W81° 49.901'
B: 42 pints = N29° 28.278' W81° 49.901'
C: 163,000 pints = N29° 28.288' W81° 49.901'