Indiana Spirit Quest #97: Bridge to Waterloo Traditional Cache

EDITED OUT OBJECTIONABLE TEXT 8-17-2011

Pioneer Cemetery (All photos by The Shadow)

The Indiana Spirit Quest series of geocaches will take you to a number of small, rural, historic cemeteries built by Hoosier Pioneers. In less than a year, the quest has grown to almost a hundred caches hidden in nine northeast Indiana counties, and the hiders have grown to three cacher teams, each comprised of A Man and His Dog...The Indiana Division of Historic Preservation & Archeology claims there are over 100,000 cemeteries and burial grounds in Indiana. Personally we think this is an absurd figure, but since they're a part of the IDNR, they MUST be right...so we're at the one-tenth of one percent mark and climbing! PRAIRIEPARTNERS has set a record for one-day ISQ finds on 10-16-2004 at 55! 103 cacher teams have logged over 1,300 finds.

TOP TEN FINDS

FTF's

2. 16 --Bluegillfisherman
3. 14 --Buddaman
4. 8 --Pinestrail

The Shadow has selected Lutz Cemetery , Section 2, Grant Township, DeKalb County, Northeast of Waterloo and the Grand Army of The Republic Highway, for your caching pleasure. Listen to what he has to say:

Welcome to Lutz Cemetery, Grant township, DeKalb County. This one is definitely no longer active; a large area for so few VISIBLE graves. Checked with GPSr and calculated .6 acre for the site. After walking around a bit, my impression is that many stones have been ransacked, stolen, moved or whatever. I saw several cement bases with no markers. I also saw some large marker bases with no sign of the top parts. I saw what may be grave indentations in the area. A lot of these, but no markers of any sort. .

Offroad parking is available here: The parking area is on a wide 90 degree turn in the road. A small foot bridge crosses the road's drainage ditch to give access to the cemetery.

You most likely will see a lot of cattle in the adjacent fields. The cemetery is fenced off on three sides with pasture. Looks to be an electrified fence. I didn't grab it to check (You know, the wet paint sign). A farmstead is about 250 yards to the south. You will need to be discreet, as you will be quite exposed here. A barren looking landscape indeed.

There is a Civil War vet here. An officer that has one of the newer replacement markers:

Pretty desolate place. This one is sort of depressing to me, I suppose, because of the missing markers and the condition of those remaining. --THE SHADOW

Unfortunately, the on-line burial records are riddled with inaccuracies, so as to be somewhat less than useless. However it appears that there are at least 26 souls laid to rest here, the earliest being Catharine Eichelberger who died in 1847. It appears the cemetery is named for Michael and Magdalene Lutz, buried here in 1849 and 1882 respectively. Last burial appears to be in 1881, with the majority in the 1850's and 1860's...(BTW, Patrick says the way HE tests fences is to PEE on them...)

UPDATE FEB. 2005: "Paws"itraction has pointed out that the sign is spelled "Cementery" --how did we all miss that? Shows that the eye sees what it's used to, even if it's not there...

When the railroad was built Miles Waterman owned a tract of land on both sides of the railroad. On this tract he laid out the town of Waterloo, and it was then named Waterloo City owing to the fact that there was another Waterloo in the state. John Hornberger assisted Mr. Waterman in laying out the town. The town received its name from Mr. Waterman. Some thought at the time it should be called Waterman, but Mr. Waterman did not like to have his name used, so a comprise was brought about and the name of Waterloo was adopted. The first building erected in Waterloo was a railroad office. Lots were sold, business buildings erected and residences began to spring up. When the town was first laid out it was designed that Washington street would be the principle business street of the town and for that reason the street was made exceptionally wide. Wayne street was also made wide as it was planned that this should also be a business street. Some of the first men to move to Waterloo were T. Y. Dickinson, who later established The Waterloo Press; Dr. J. N. Chamberlain, sheriff of DeKalb County from 1860 to 1862; Henry Willis, who filled the same office from 1864 to 1868; Jacob Kahn, merchant; and Gen. L. J. Blair; John Shull opened the first tavern and it later became known as the Central House. J. P. Beers, from Auburn, was the first lawyer here. The first grist mill was built and operated by Josiah and Jonathan Weaver in 1868 and it stood in Uniontown. George Thompson and Best, McClellan & Moody later erected a grist mill on North Wayne street just north of the Myers residence. This mill was destroyed by fire in 1876. Another mill was erected on the sight of the present town hall and under the management of Duncan Bros., the mill was destroyed by fire in the early eighties. Another mill was built on the same sight by Bower and Wyrick, which also later was destroyed by fire. Some years later the next mill was built by the late Frank C. Goodwin along the Fort Wayne and Jackson branch railroad on North Center street.

UPDATE June 2005: Cache has been moved and coordinates and clue changed.

The cache container is a small camo'd match holder. BYOP. Park with care.As always, please be respectful, and cache in, trash out.

Cache In - Trash Out!

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NIGHT CACHING IS NOT ALLOWED ON ANY ISQ CACHES