Cache Info
The cache is NOT on the freeway
it is accessable from the underpass.
The cache is protected by a custom designed carrier that helps it blend in seamlessly with the environment.
Update: 7-5-25 The 3D printed carrier seems to have gone missing, so I created a custom sized circular container from laser cut plywood. Grab each side of the cylinder and twist gently to open.
Please replace exactly as found.
Lathrop is a city located 10 miles south of Stockton in San Joaquin County. The 2020 census reported that Lathrop's population was 28,701. The city is located in Northern California at the intersection of Interstate 5 and California State Route 120, in the San Joaquin Valley.
History
Lathrop was developed around railroad interests. The town was founded around 1868 when the first transcontinental railroad was extended to the area after a dispute between the president of the Central Pacific Railroad, Leland Stanford, and the City of Stockton. The two parties had struck a right-of-way agreement to build a railroad through Stockton, but when city officials delayed in deciding where the alignment should go, Stanford decided to instead build the railroad around Stockton and set up a new town along the route.
The new town was platted into 16 subdivisions around the site of a train depot named Wilson's Station at a wye built for switching train cars. A merchant store and schoolhouse were built soon after. In 1869, the area was renamed in honor of the family of Leland Stanford's wife, Jane Stanford (née Lathrop), and her brother, Charles Lathrop, who worked for Leland as an engineer at Central Pacific.
On September 6, 1869, four months after the golden spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, the San Joaquin Railroad Bridge at Mossdale Crossing in Lathrop was finished by Western Pacific. This completed the last westbound link of the transcontinental railroad to the Pacific coast, with the first through train arriving that evening, making Lathrop an important division point and rail stop. In 1871, a post office opened in Lathrop. That same year, the railroad built a hotel for $50,000 called Hotel Lathrop, said to be one of the largest in the state of California at the time.
Throughout the 1870s, Lathrop was an important rail stop for the transcontinental railroad. This generated steady growth in the area, with the population increasing to about 600 by 1879.
In February 1886, the railroad's hotel caught fire and was destroyed. That, along with the railroad deciding to move its roundhouse and machine shops to nearby Tracy, California around the same time, caused Lathrop to enter into a period of economic and population decline until World War I.
During the 1940s, Lathrop expanded from its original townsite to an area of about five square miles. Following World War II, housing tracts were built and several large industrial employers moved there. Residential growth slowed during the 1950s and 1960s, but picked up again in the subsequent decades, doubling in population to 2,137 in 1970 and reaching 6,841 by 1990.
Lathrop was incorporated in 1989, and its first General Plan adopted in 1991.