The last of the 150 challenge coins for the 2025 Challenge was given out on Friday, April 11th. Thank you all for participating!
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 “2025 Land Between the Lakes Heritage Geocache Challenge: General Stores Between the Rivers”. There are 7 geocaches placed across Land Between the Lakes related to the history of the Community General Stores 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 in a fallen tree.
The “2025 Land Between the Lakes Heritage Geocache Challenge: General Stores Between the Rivers” was researched, written, and placed by archaeologist Lacy Risner. Please thank Lacy for her hard work and dedication.
Golden Pond Stores
The operation of businesses in the BTR seems to be very fluid. Some stores, had to move locations all over a community while other stores were owned by several different families. The building pictured below is one example of the latter. In the early 1900s, in the Golden Pond community, this store was Bogard & Co., then it became E.W. Rhodes, then W.P. Wil-liams, then W.G. Ahart & Sons, and lastly H.B. Le-neave & Son.
Leneave & Son
Homer and Irene had 2 children, Vance Bogard and Mildren. Vance joined the Navy in 1938 at the age of 17. After World War II, Vance returned to Golden Pond. Like his father he pursued multiple careers, run-ning the store, farming, and working as a mail carrier. He describes the challenges of delivering mail in an area with poor roads, including utilizing boats during floods and following bulldozers after snowstorms.
Ahart and Son’s
When the Ahart’s ran the store, it was open six days a week, from sun up to sundown, or sometimes until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. These long hours suggest that the store was a central part of the community. It is pos-sible that because of its continuous operation the peo-ple who frequented the store during Ahart's time con-tinued into the Leneave era.
There is a pattern of similarity between grocery store owners no matter where they are in the BTR. Many of these individuals are those who have been able to earn enough money to invest in their community by opening a grocery store. Many times these individuals took on multi-ple responsibilities to support their families and their com-munities such as delivering mail or supplying farm goods to their neighbors and friends. In a sense these people and their families created a support network for the community as a whole. So that when times got tough they knew their neighbors would be there to help them get back up.
While the postal service was vital to connect-ing Golden Pond with the outside world, oral histo-ries indicate that residents also relied heavily on local networks and resources. The grocery stores, huck-sters, and mailmen were likely the ones who helped create safe spaces to share information or helped to facilitate the networks of local communication.
There are many more grocery stores that ex-isted in the BTR and each one of them were integral to the creation and maintenance of the culture of family and mutual support that is uniquely expressed in BTR history.
