Solsbury Cave
THE CACHE IS NOT AT THE LISTED COORDINATES! But, please start at that location to solve this Multicache.
Enjoy a moderate and pleasant hike to a small cave reputed to have Pony Express connections to solve this EASY multicache.
The best parking is at Mt Wire South Trailhead. Take the trail to the right (eastbound) for the best route and hike to the posted coordinates where you will find the cave.
Solsbury Cave is in a valley just below legendary Solsbury Hill Wasatch.
At the cave, look just inside for an old marker placed there at some time in the past. You may need a light (mobile phone lights should be fine). You will need to get down very low to see the marker.
The top line of the marker contains six digits (digit 1 through digit 6). Build the coordinates of the cache using those numbers as follows:
A = Digit 2
B = Digit 4
C = Digit 5
D = Digit 3
E = Digit 1
F = Digit 6
The cache is at:
N 40 45.ABC
W 111 48.DEF
Along your route is another historical cache, Solsbury Yggdrasil.
Now that the caching is out of the way, read on for some history of Solsbury Cave...
The riders of the famous Pony Express were some of the toughest breed of men ever known, riding thousands of miles through the fiercest conditions imaginable. Much has been written regarding their important role in history. However, part of Pony Express history has been entirely unknown until now and is only coming to light after hour upon hour of diligent work on my part.
Most of the riders of the Pony Express were deeply involved in the design and creation of paper dolls and paper doll chains.
Thousands upon thousands of these paper dolls and doll chains were created by the Pony Express over its short history. Having very limited capacity for carrying extra baggage on their runs, the riders often stored their paper creations in secret caches along their routes. Solsbury Cave, the subject of this multi, is rumored to be just such a storage location. As you visit the cave, imagine it in 1860 and 1861, with its dark corners and shelves brimming with intricate paper dolls cut out by actual riders of the Pony Express!
Imagine further a dark, frigid snowstorm late at night on the Great Plains. With winds howling, a group of weather-hardened men sit with backs to an icy rock wall offering only a tiny bit of relief from the gale. The men are designing and cutting out elaborate paper dolls often based on or surpassing the latest doll fashions found only in Paris and Milan, all by the light of one or two guttering candles which are often extinguished by gusts of icy wind blowing into the shelter, relying only on one or two old and torn blankets strung up between rocks to act as a minimally effective windbreak and highlighting the dedication to their craft, for to use the blankets for purposes of comfort or warmth was utterly unimaginable to them and not the least of which were....sorry, I forgot what I was trying to say.
The headquarters of the Pony Express Paper Doll Corps were located just west of Omaha in a rugged system of rocky cliffs and caves. The location was frequently attacked by vicious armed outlaws attempting to steal the inventory of dolls stored there, and even more critically, the designs of dolls which were exclusive to the Corps. The Captain of the Doll Corps resided here and was reputed to be one of the toughest of the tough of the riders. His nickname was The Big Doller.
Many other "doller" riders frequented headquarters. The infamous Roger Lazenby logged over 100,000 miles of travel with the Express, all on horseback under unimaginably fierce weather conditions. Lazenby is said to have created in excess of 10,000 paper doll chains, some of which were likely stored in the very cave you are visiting, as it was located along the Omaha-to-Salt Lake City run. He single-handedly advanced paper doll design and manufacturing technologies far beyond anyone else in history.
Roger Lazenby AKA Deadeye Doll
Lazenby was known commonly as "Deadeye Doll" or "The Cutter" in reference to his famously intricate doll-cutting scissors which he often utilized on horseback, galloping at up to 30 MPH, cutting out yet more fabulously detailed and dainty paper doll creations.
The raw materials used in the production of Pony Express paper dolls were in very short supply and were often fought over viciously, even amongst riders of the same squad. This led to famous gunfights such as that between Raymond "Red Scissors" (don't ask why they were red) Smythe and Dan "Doll of Doom" Larson near Phoenix, who fought to the death (both of them) over five sheets of satin-lined doll paper stock just imported from Paris.
Even more precious to the riders than paper stock were the scissors used for cutting out the dolls. It is said that a rider's scissors were of even greater importance than his horse. These scissors were often carried sidearm-style in special holsters as the riders made their journeys. Many riders carried multiple pair, all within instant reach and available for various doll cutting-out needs. During the peak of the Pony Express Paper Doll period, most riders shunned firearms in favor of maximizing the number of custom scissors available for immediate access.
Photo disclaimer: Historical reenactment by Seawind and Heinz - NOT an actual Pony Express rider
The greater importance the riders placed on their scissors as compared to their horses does not indicate the latter weren't highly valued. The more skilled of the Expressmen were fond of creating paper doll horses modeled after their favorite mounts. This led to the design and creation of paper clothes that the men could interchange between their paper horse cutouts. A lively trade in horse clothes was born, with fashionable paper horse garments becoming the medium of exchange for goods and services. An eye-catching pink horse dress was worth up to 10 packages of high-grade tobacco and a nice paper horse hat could fetch half a flask of whiskey.
But, what did the Pony Express members do with all these paper dolls? After all, historians estimate they created well over 500,000 from 1860 to 1862. Most were hoarded and stored in hundreds of paper doll caches throughout the range of their operation. Since many riders did not survive the overwhelmingly grueling conditions under which they worked, there are no doubt many such caches still hidden in the formidable rocky terrain of the inland West, the cave you are visiting being an exception, as none can be found today (I checked).
More generous riders were said to have attached paper dolls to the mail they were delivering, intended as special gifts for the recipients. Some were in the habit of creating dolls from weatherproof paper and leaving them in random places along their routes, not unlike today's practice of leaving painted rocks for others to find.
Contests between riders of a squad were common. These were the source of frequent and often dangerous arguments between the men as to whose creation was the best or most intricate. Tom "Incisor" Bozeman famously yelled at a fellow rider, "Your Wycinanki Origami crap is NOT better than my exquisite Scherenschnitte Saffayanna Dolly you dastardly dunderhead!," followed by the sounds of a fierce struggle and scissors snipping at each other. Unfortunately, the exquisite Dolly in question did not survive the battle and is now lost to history.
The Pony Express was not the only organization obsessed with paper doll creation during this period. Many members of the Detroit Iron Foundry Teamsters Union delved deeply into doll design and manufacturing. However, they lacked the skills and technology of the Pony Express riders and resorted multiple times to infiltration attempts and industrial espionage, attempting to steal the Express' expertise. In 1861, Dean Hargrave, as rough an iron foundry worker as you will ever see, posed as a new Pony Express recruit and was admitted to the organization. Interestingly, his subterfuge was not given away by the fact that he couldn't mount a horse, but because he attempted to use SEWING scissors for cutting out his paper dolls, a transgression of immeasurable magnitude in Pony Express circles. He never returned to Detroit.
For the definitive source of information pertaining to Pony Express paper doll history Click Here.