Gold Butte Traditional Cache
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FIRE SALE! 11/01/2005. As a result of a fire in the area this cache features a brand new cache box with brand new contents placed a few feet from the old burned up cache. A short walk from one of the many dirt roads in this abandoned mining area. Easily accessable in any vehicle using the new well marked road. High clearance vehicle recommended to complete the byway loop. As always in the desert, bring plenty of water and avoid abandoned mines and pits in the area.
Visit the historic mining town of Gold Butte. This town was established in 1908 to service the many mining operations in the area. It seems everywhere you look in this area there is a small hill accompanied by a small hole where someone has tried their luck. The town at one time boasted of a store, hotel, stable, and post office. To get to the cache from I-15, take the Riverside exit to Gold Butte Road (the first right past the Virgin River Bridge) or find your way to Riverside through Mesquite and Bunkerville off NV 170 and travel south to the ghost town of Gold Butte. The Gold Butte Back Country Byway is 62 miles long. There are signs designating your progress along the way. On your way you will pass a petroglyph site, on the right, about a mile before the sandstone rock formations known as Whitney Pockets. Be sure to visit Dr. Webe's Virtual Cache, it is one of our favorites. At Devils Throat, a 100-foot wide by 100-foot deep sinkhole that continues to expand, make a right and visit that Virtual Cache. The road to Devil's Throat is a bumpy gravel road but is suitable for passenger cars moving slowly. From Devil's Throat there are two options, continuing to Red Bluff Spring and taking the abandoned road South which requires a high-clearance, two-wheel or four-wheel drive vehicle, or head back to the Byway, which any vehicle can traverse and head South. The cache is in one of our Nevada camoflage containers(large green ammo can). Gold butte in it's heyday was a tent boomtown which left but a few foundations to view. A quick trip up the many short jeep roads will reveal mineshafts, footings pacements, implements and old mining shacks now caved in or burned. The resting places of two historic characters from the area can also be seen. The pair were buried behind their now missing house after living to their eighties in the area. See their story "The Long and the Short of Gold Butte" by Rex Jensen at (visit link) The The Byway is open year-round. The Byway travels across a desert landscape among the foothills of the Virgin Mountains along the Tramp and Lime Ridges includes the views of many beautiful rock formations. Three separate Native American cultures are known to have settled here. Their petroglyph carvings can be seen etched into the rocks. More impressive than the above are some between benchmarks U162 and Z178 in the bottoms along a shady red cliff. Early non-Indian explorers were followed by the Mormon colonizers who settled in the Mesquite and Bunkerville area in 1877. Their etchings are also visible. The trip is one of Nevada's eight National Back Country Byways. For you benchmark hunters there are hundreds out here. Because there were no caches in the area we logged 12 blatantly visible benchmarks next to the old road and I noticed while logging them we missed many. Information: BLM-Las Vegas Field Office, 4765 W Vegas Dr, Las Vegas NV 89107 / 702-647-5000. Lake Mead NRA, 601 Nevada Hwy, Boulder City NV 89005 / 702-293-8990
Original cache contains a geocaching.com pin and is full of new items.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Sbyybj gur Tbyq Ohggr fvtaf, gurl jvyy cbvag lbh gb gur gbja. Lbhe TCF jvyy trg lbh evtug gb gur pnpur sebz gurer.
Treasures
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