All 150 coins have been claimed for 2026. The caches are still in place but the 2026 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 “2026 Land Between the Lakes Heritage Geocache Challenge: Mississippian Indians”. There are 6 geocaches placed across Land Between the Lakes related to the history of the Mississippian Indians (A.D. 1000 – 1500) along the Tennessee and Cumberland 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” clear watertight plastic box marked “Heritage Geocache” on the top. The geocache is placed under a log.
Gray’s Landing Village
The Gopher
In the year 1915, archaeologist Clarence Bloomfield Moore parked his paddle-wheel steamboat “the Gopher” at Gray’s Landing to conduct archaeological excavations on the property of Andrew Jackson Gray and his brother Thomas James Gray.
Clarence Bloomfield Moore was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1852 to Clara Moore (philanthropist and writer) and Bloomfield Moore (businessman and paper company owner). After graduating from Harvard 1873, Moore traveled Europe, Central and South America, and Asia, until his father’s death 1878, and he became the company president. Moore amassed a fortune in the family business through the 1880s.
In the 1890s, Moore devoted his life to archaeology, traveling the southeast in his steamboats, the Gopher and the Alligator, excavating mostly Mississippian Mound sites. The crew of his boat was also a baseball team, and they often played local baseball teams at their stops.
Excavation of Two Mounds at the
Andrew Jackson Gray Farm
In the cultivated field of the Tennessee River floodplain were two Mississippian mounds within view of the A.J. Gray house. The larger mound was 96 ft in diameter while the smaller mound was 75 feet in diameter.
Artifacts in and around the mound included a chunky stone, stone agriculture hoes, the fresh-water shells, arrowheads, and pottery including a vessel with an effigy of a human head and an effigy bowl shaped as a mussel shell.
The Gray Family
at Moltke and Gray’s Landing
James Gray purchased the land around Gray’s Landing in 1812. He was a company commander in the War of 1812 and went on to become a successful farmer, Baptist minister, and Tennessee General Assemblyman. His Son Andrew Jackson Gray was born at Grays Landing and served in the Civil War. He also farmed as well as owned and operated a general store and post office at Moltke, TN. His two sons, Andrew Jackson Gray Jr. and Thomas James Gray were the land owners when C.B. Moore came to excavate the village on their property.
