Historical records suggest that the earliest land claims in Campton Township were made in the mid-1830s. The township was known as Fairfield until 1849, when it was discovered there was another Fairfield Township in Illinois. The township briefly took on the name of Milo, until it was renamed Campton in 1850, possibly after township supervisor Joseph P. Bartlett’s hometown in New Hampshire. There are a number of homes, farms, churches, and cemeteries included in the Kane County Register of Historic Places.
One of these sites (the Chaffee Farmstead) was the home of WascoZooKeeper and his family from 1983 through 2002, providing the inspiration for this historic tour multi-cache. We hope this will be just the first of several “historic tour” caches we are able to establish.
You can easily complete the tour of all six locations in an hour or less by car, and probably less than 1-1/2 hours by bicycle, especially if you lay out the locations on a map before starting. You need not visit them in the order listed here! But if you can, take some extra time to observe and appreciate the historic nature of these sites. The usual MapQuest link on this page will show you the location of the first site; to see a map with the approximate locations of the other five, click here. (If that link doesn't work for some reason, there's also a non-interactive version of the map. And now there's an aerial photo of all six stages too.)
The building currently in use as the Campton Township Community Center at N41° 56.477 W088° 24.539 (PUBLIC) was originally the railroad station for the town of Wasco, although it has been relocated from its original location. The Great Western Trail on the nearby railroad right-of-way is a popular site for running, biking, dog-walking, hiking, geocaching, and just enjoying nature. The station was a major point of commerce for agriculture in the area, as farmers would use the railroad to ship crops, livestock, and dairy products to market and receive equipment and supplies from the city. For many years after the railroad was abandoned, the building was used by the American Legion as a meeting hall, before being sold to the township. After considerable rehabilitation, it was reopened as the township assessor’s office and community meeting center. There is a memorial marker on the site; what is the number of the American Legion Post on the marker? Let this four-digit number be “A”.
Various sources cite Vermont native Eber Chaffee’s arrival in Campton Township as occurring sometime between 1838 and 1840. A tanner and shoemaker by trade, he turned to farming after moving to Illinois, and in 1843 he built the first brick house in Campton Township at N41° 55.982 W088° 26.066 (PRIVATE). This house became home to Chaffee, his wife, and their 13 children, several of whom died in childhood within a short period of time, most likely from disease. Another son was killed by a lynch mob in Texas during the Civil War due to his Union sympathies. Originally part of a 600+ acre farm, the house stands on a mortared fieldstone foundation and has walls of solid brick, made from clay deposits on the Chaffee property. There are four fireplaces and two brick hearths inside, and the original hand-hewn timbers are visible in the basement. The first floor of the white frame addition, which is now the kitchen, is believed to have been added in 1924. The current owners have added a second story to the addition, as well as expanding it to the rear of the house. The large barn, built in the 1910s using pegged post-and-beam construction, was actually the smaller of two adjacent barns; the larger barn, which stood perpendicular to the remaining barn, was torn down when the surrounding area was subdivided for development in the late 1950s. The current farmstead, as listed on the county register, is approximately 3.6 acres. (Note: this property is located on a very busy road. For the safety of yourself and others turn north onto the side road located immediately east of the property and stop well clear of the intersection.) How many dormers are on the barn roof? Let this one-digit number be “B”. (Note: additional landscaping has made it difficult to see some parts of the barn. Symmetry is your friend -- it is safe to assume the side or end you can't see is similar to the side or end you can see.)
The Chaffee home was the site of Campton town meetings and school district meetings until approximately 1874, when the township built a permanent meeting building at N41° 55.953 W088° 25.755 (PUBLIC) at a cost of $1014.52 on land deeded by the Chaffee family. An interesting clause in the deed of the property called for the property to revert to the Chaffee heirs if it were to ever cease being used for township purposes. Although named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, the building fell into relative disuse within the next ten years due to its lack of plumbing. The building was updated in 1996 with a bathroom and wheelchair ramps and is again actively used, although due to its small size town meetings and elections are still held elsewhere. What is the total number of doors and windows (not PANES) on the building? Let this one-digit number be “C”.
Private William Bennett was born in Sandown, New Hampshire, in 1758. He enlisted four times to fight in the Revolutionary War and fought in the Battle of Fort Ann. After the war, he moved to Geneseo, New York, before moving to Kane County in 1836 with his wife Sally (Ward) and her children from a previous marriage. He died on February 15, 1846, and is the only documented Revolutionary War soldier to be buried in unincorporated Kane County, where he rests in God’s Little Acre cemetery at N41° 57.880 W088° 24.574 (PUBLIC), along with his wife and family members Laura Ann Morgan, Hannibal Ward, and Amos Haskins, who were also buried in the private cemetery between 1840 and 1850. The Daughters of the American Revolution marked the site in 1942 with a bronze marker on a boulder east of the cemetery, but the marker was stolen about 20 or 30 years later. The cemetery continued to be owned by descendents of the Bennett family until early 1996, when it was deeded over to the Campton Township Cemetery Association, and it was named to the county register later the same year. The gravestones, now set in concrete to stabilize their condition, are not in their original locations, though all five graves are within the fenced boundary of the cemetery. His military rank was indeed Private, other signs you may see notwithstanding. (This stop in this multi-stage cache is also the location of the Posthumous Promotion? cache -- follow the link for the cache description.) What year did Hannibal Ward die? Let this four-digit number be “D”.
The original house at the Eddy-Swanson farm at N41° 56.372 W088°23.541 (PRIVATE) was built by Harry Eddy (originally from Genesee County, NY) in the mid-1880s on property he purchased from the United States government in 1843. The outbuildings on the property are representative of some of the changes that took place in Kane County farming over the years. Listed on the county’s 1986 Historic Structure Survey, it was named to the county register in 1999, and was the subject of controversy and lawsuits as the developer of the nearby Prairie Lakes development accused the county of using the property to obstruct their application and delay their building plans. How many concrete silos are on the northwest side of the large barn? Let this one-digit number be “E”.
Unfortunately, to date WascoZooKeeper has been unable to find much information about the Fischer Farmstead at N41° 56.740 W088° 24.102 (PRIVATE) other than the fact that it is listed on the county register. I hope to fill in more details later as I am able to obtain them. The front of the house appears representative of the late 1800s in the area, but as you look toward the east side of the house there has clearly been major rehabilitation and remodeling. The listed coordinates put you in front of the house, near a yellow tent-shaped sign with a three-digit number approximately 12” high on each face of the sign. Let this three-digit number be “F”.
The cache is a ammo box, and can be found at coordinates N41° gg.hhh W088° jj.kkk where:
- gg = (D/24) - (C*E) - 5
- hhh = F + E + (B*C*E)
- jj = (A+5) / 50 (hint – consider doubling “A+5” and dividing by 100)
- kkk = B*C*E*E
Swimmers RULE! 
Violas ROCK! 