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.
Old Spanish Monastery – Location 25.9296, -80.1545
On the Dixie Highway in North Miami, at 800 years old, stands the oldest building in America. It’s called the “Old Spanish Monastery” but its real name is The Cloisters of the Ancient Spanish Monastery and St. Bernard de Clairvaux Episcopal Church. You may be wondering how it was built in Florida 300 years before Columbus? The answer is that it wasn’t built in Florida; it was built in Sacramenia, Spain in 1144. But the really weird part of the story is what happened next.
In 1925 William Randolph Hearst, purchased the Monastery and dismantled the whole works block by block. Each block was numbered and packed in a crate with hay. The crates were numbered corresponding to the blocks inside, and then shipped to the United States. U. S. Customs officials quarantined the blocks fearing the hay could be carrying hoof & mouth disease. The crates were opened and the hay was burned. A big problem occurred when workmen failed to replace the blocks in the right crates. The entire shipment was then stored in a New York warehouse where they remained for 26 years. In the meantime Hearst experienced financial problems and was forced to sell the whole works.
In 1952 the blocks were purchased by two men who moved them to Florida where they intended to put the monastery back together as a tourist attraction. The mismatched crates and blocks were like a giant jigsaw puzzle. It took 23 men 90 days just to open all the crates, some weighing over a ton. As an example of how big this project was, when the crates were burned more than 7 tons of nails were salvaged from the ashes. It took 19 months and 1.5 million dollars to reconstruct the ancient building.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: Which US city has a law forbidding the sale of Corn Flakes, on Sunday?
A: Mordor = N29° 26.463' W81° 46.511'
B: Hogwarts = N29° 26.473' W81° 46.511'
C: Columbus, Ohio = N29° 26.483' W81° 46.511'