Dedicated to our geocaching friend and an all around good guy,
Chief Paulina
On May 12th of 2002, the two of us and our old
friend DaMoan
found this Chief Paulina cache as our 3rd total find, and boy
what a lucrative few years it has been! This is the first place we
ever:
- Posted a photograph to geocaching dot com, this adorable
one.
- Traded a travel bug into a geocache, named Squid
Bobber which had come from Steelhead
Masters.
- Found a cache in a spot one of us had visited before
(Zzzoey)
- Found a GUARDIAN for a cache, Lenny the
Lizard.
The Orchard cache unfortunately came up missing and when I offered
to re-instate it (perhaps a bit differently), Chief Paulina was
kind enough to let me. *thanks!* I decided in the spirit of local
history to include some nearby features into a multi-cache-(I am
not even from here but am a member of the local historical society
and LOVE history especially when it is married to the land, like
this orchard.) Finding history is fascinating. I wish everyone
would look around and figure out who originally was on the spot
they live on... what happened to those folks? How did the local
creek or spring or cemetery get it's name? It fascinates me and
hopefully the person finding this geocache.
The McCoin Orchard was planted in 1886 by Julius and Sarah
McCoin (back when this was all still Crook County) and was
privately owned until the 1930s when the government bought the
land. (It's now owned by the USFS). This orchard and another up the
road still bear fruit, and if you happen to see some, by all means,
enjoy! But PLEASE leave some for the rest of us...
The water trough is fed via a decent flowing spring, which has
probably been helpful in keeping the old fruit trees alive in this
otherwise arid area, and we see horses with riders here more often
than not. I wasn't able to dig up much information about the
McCoins, other than they were homesteaders here, near Gray
Butte.
These pioneers probably shopped in nearby Lamonta, Oregon...aka
ghost town... aka nothing but a waypoint and a well and a wonderful
old windmill (N44*28.156',W121*02.15') where there was a post
office, general store and livery barn, Walter Rice's Drug store,
Fred Mingers and Pete Yancer's Blacksmith Shop, Emery Seal's
Saloon, the Tom Benefield Dance Hall, a telephone switch board and
grange hall (which boasted over 100 members, the first grange hall
in Central Oregon). A dentist from Madras came out once a month to
work on locals' choppers. Judge Miller had a home in Lamonta and he
held court when necessary. There was a literary society and debates
were quite popular (where oh where did the civic consciousness
go?), even a football and baseball team!
During the drought of the mid 1920's many families had to give
up their farms and moved away. The Government declared it a drought
area and in 1934 purchased the many thousands of acres as "marginal
land".
You will be able to walk to each waypoint, the first being
virtual, the second being a small mint cannister holding coords to
the final cache, which is a large Zzzoey-painted ammo can full of
goodies. The whole area is fairly public, this is a popular spot
for mountain biking. Please be discreet and respect the area.
The first waypoint will take you to a small memorial. You will
need to gather some information to get the coordinates for the next
waypoint.
Number of points on the white barricade = AA =
_______
Sum of the digits in the date under Slaughter = B =
_______
Now takes those numbers and plug them in here (do a bit of math) to
find one of the trees in the orchard. In that tree you'll find the
coordinates to the cache.
20AA + 133 = NNN = ________
60B + 18 = WWW = _________
Now plug all your numbers into these coordinates to find the next
waypoint:
N 44* 25. NNN = N 44* 25. _______
W 121* 05. WWW = W 121* 05. _______
Good Luck! Enjoy!