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.
Hollow Earth Settlement – Location 26.4347, -81.8156
If you’re looking for the center of the universe, look no farther than the Estero River just south of Fort Meyers in Lee County. This is the spot where Dr. Cyrus Reed Teed established his Koreshan Unity Settlement, an unusual colony of hollow earth followers. Cyrus Teed, who was born in 1839 near Trout Creek, New York, spent his younger years experimenting with alchemy, electrical phenomena, and studying medicine. Fascinated by electrical phenomena, Dr. Teed dabbled in physics and electromagnetism. In one of his electrical experiments he received a severe jolt that knocked him out. While unconscious he claimed to have experienced a divine illumination. Teed said that during this spiritual awakening, a beautiful woman revealed the secrets of the universe to him, and told him that he had a mission to “redeem humanity.”
Teed changed his name to Koresh, and began promoting a pseudo-scientific notion that the Earth is a hollow spinning sphere and that we inhabit the inside held to the inner walls by centrifugal force. Actually, Teed went beyond just a run-of-the-mill Hollow Earth theory, he hypothesized that the entire universe was contained inside a super-size womb, called Earth, with the planets and sun suspended in the center, except the moon, which Teed said was just an illusion. Teed’s theory was appealing to many religious fundamentalists because no longer was the Earth just another tiny speck in the Universe, it was important because it contained the whole works inside and absolutely nothing on the outside.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: Actor Johnny Depp suffers from a fear of this.
A: Pokemon = N29° 29.682' W81° 51.652'
B: Unicorns = N29° 29.682' W81° 51.642'
C: Clowns = N29° 29.682' W81° 51.632'