The Real Gimlet Traditional Cache
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This cache can easily be accessed from SH75 at East Fork Road, which is about 5 miles south of Ketchum. Once on East Fork Road, turn left into the parking area for the bike path trailhead and you will be quite close.
This parking area roughly approximates the site of the old settlement of Gimlet at the turn of the century. About one tenth of a mile south is where the rails were switched for the Gimlet spur of the Oregon Short Line, which was part of the Union Pacific System. The spur was about three tenths of a mile long in total. If you look south and line up the old RR bed with the steel truss bridge, you get a better feel for the layout of the spur. (Click on the images below) The bike trail down that way closely resembles the route of the spur and the main line from the switch point north. This spur, completed late 1883, (the OSL was completed to Ketchum on August 17, 1884) made possible a more efficient transportation system for the area mines. The ore was hauled from the mine in wagons or trucks, to an area up the spur with counterbalanced ramps called tipples. As the rigs were backed up, the tipples would “tip” and come to rest on the hopper cars and the loads were dumped. As the vehicles moved away, the counterbalance allowed the tipples to raise and rail cars could then reposition. Joe Swaner, father of local historian Ivan Swaner, operated the Gimlet siding for the OSL from 1944 till 1951. The Triumph mine produced between 28 and 29 million dollars in the years from 1936 to 1957. One hundred-ten workers were employed at the time the mine ceased its very successful large-scale operation. After that, tourism and skiing played the major roll for the railroad in the Wood River Valley.Have a seat if you will, and imagine the shrill of the whistle and the thick black plume belching forth from the stacks of the early iron horses as they muscled their way up the valley.I hope you enjoy the area and the cache that brought you to it. As always, use care in removing and replacing the little magnetic box in this popular area. This find should be a four-season cache, but we'll see.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Haqre Cuvy