All 150 coins have been claimed. The caches are still in place but the challenge has ended. Thank you for coming out and enjoying LBL Heritage.
This Geocache is part of an annual Geocache Challenge put on by the Heritage Program at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area as part of our outreach to the public, to get people to explore their forest and their history, and to share the unique heritage of the families from Between the Rivers.
This Geocache is part of the “2024 Land Between the Lakes Heritage Geocache Challenge: Moonshine Heritage”. There are 6 geocaches placed across Land Between the Lakes related to the history of the moonshine industry between the rivers. If you locate each geocache, and collect a numbered aluminum tree tag from each cache, you can turn them in at the Golden Pond Visitor Center for one of 150
Challenge Coins created for this event.
The Geocache is a 6” x 6” orange watertight plastic box marked “Heritage Geocache” on the top. The geocache is placed between two large trees.
The Revenuers and "Big Six"
William Bernard "Big Six" Henderson was born in St. Johns Kentucky in 1903. He graduated from Jasper College in Indiana in 1923 where he studied law, accounting, Latin, English, Greek, history, botany, and mathematics. He then moved on to study law at the University of Louisville KY.
After working with the L & N Railroad for 20 years, Henderson became a Treasury Investigator in the Department of Alcohol, Tax Unit. From 1941 -1970, Big Six became known to almost every moonshiner and still man in Kentucky. In fact, Henderson’s very first “out in the wood” moonshine still raid was in Golden Pond Kentucky!
Henderson was known for his storytelling. A quote from the Wine and Crime podcast describes Big Six as “a very tall lawman who is his own biggest fan.” Yet, the endearing respect that he showed to the moonshiners and bootleggers he apprehended created a mutual admiration that will preserve his legend for decades to come.When a still was raided the moonshiners weren’t carted off to jail, instead, they were often told to come in the next day to the revenuer's office to get fingerprinted. Common decency aside, agents still had to destroy the stills they located.
All the geocaches in this challenge have been placed in locations that were frequented by moonshiners. Some are placed close to old moonshine distilling sites. Others are placed on ridgelines or hills that overlook areas moonshiners once hid their stills in.
As you walk through the woods on your way to find these geocaches, there are many subtle signs of the past and if you pay attention to them, you can get a glimpse of times gone by.
There are old road beds in varying states of erosion. Some are vibrantly apparent while others have faded into the landscape. You can follow these roads to the geocaches and imagine the moonshiners that once traveled it, keeping their heads on a swivel looking for interlopers and revenuers.
Other signs of the past are daffodils and wolf trees. Many times, you can see daffodils lined up next to a road or bordering the footprint of a homesite. Wolf trees can be any species but are marked by being larger and older than surrounding trees. Their identifying feature is that its branches stretch out parallel to the ground rather than at steep angles, or they have numerous nubbins that indicate their branches have fallen off. These nubbins and the horizontal branches indicate that the tree was once in a cleared area, it did not have to fight for sunlight and could stretch its arms wide.