Sorry everybody, we checked on this cache yesterday (8-25-05)
after receiving a few "not found" messages and its gone. Either
taken or thrown down the hill, it's not where its supposed to be.
We're gonna replace it as soon as we get a new container, but until
I post a follow-up message in the logged visits or this message is
deleted from the description, the asylum lookout cache is out of
commission. Don't let some spoilsport(s) keep you from enjoying
everything that Green Hill has to offer though. It's the nicest
place in Worcester and needs as many friends as it can get, it's
been carved up and dumped on for long enough. I feel sorry for the
person who moved (took) the cache, for I neglected to mention that
it was protected by the unrestful souls that worked and died on the
grounds of the asylum. May the presence of hundreds of wailing
spirits keep you awake at night. They're watching
you.
Getting there: One can enter at any point around the cache.
There is one specific path that leads directly to the cache, but if
we were to name that trail this cache would be much too easy. It's
best to enter from the southern side of Green Hill Park (Skyline
Drive). You can park your car in the parking lot for the Green Hill
Park playground (across the way from the petting zoo). You can then
enter the woods at any point along Skyline Drive. How to find cache
once in general area.. There are two open areas in which you can
look out over the State Hospital and Route 9 into Shrewsbury. If
you look down the hill, and walk past the stone wall then you have
gone too far. Cache is in green ammo box. Some prizes are in it, if
you take one, please leave something.
Notes on Worcester State Hospital: This building was
constructed using the ideas of Thomas Story Kirkbride. Kirkbride
believed that mental illness was not curable, and therefore he
modeled his hospitals after prisons. This particular hospital was
built in the 1870s and opened in 1877 in response to the old insane
asylum on Summer Street (the first in Massachusetts) overcrowding.
Today the old hospital is empty, damaged by a fire in 1991, and
most of its duties replaced by the newer facilities that surround
the asylum. Most of the buildings that made up the wings of the
hospital (one wing for men, one wing for women, with the more
"excitable" patients farthest from the central administrative
building and the better-behaved patients closer) were demolished
after the fire. All the surrounding grounds of the hospital were
originally farmlands that were worked by the patients of the
hospital.