GCPB2Y Why Not a Chicken? (Traditional Cache) in Massachusetts, United States created by robar, sobar, & icebar

This cache has been archived.

robar: Only 1 Favorite Point in TEN YEARS?? Sheesh.

(Oh yeah, right — there were no Favorite Points for most of those years.)

Sadly, it's time to permanently archive this Geocache. I chose the site because it's a spectacular location — architecturally, historically, geographically, and it has a general coolness — but the viaduct is so tall that it has always made GPS reception on the ground very problematic. The necessary intersection is an unusual one, and so it gets a lot of confused traffic, and (worst of all), there's one heck of a lot of healthy poison ivy in all the grassy areas every summer and fall.

Thanks to everyone who visited, Find or DNF, and to MadMin both for approving a cache under an important piece of infrastructure and for helpful oversight over the years. Hopefully this archiving will free up the location for a newer and creative cache.

This entry was edited by robar on Monday, 20 April 2015 at 20:34:09 UTC.

GCPB2Y ▼

A cache by robar, sobar, & icebar Message this owner

Hidden : 6/16/2005

Difficulty:

Terrain:

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

A small cache at a historic location.

This cache is a visit to a singular location. Parking can be had at N 42°09.452 W 71°09.241 or at the nearby businesses. Be very careful walking at this site. And please do not go near the train tracks.

From the Canton Viaduct web site:

• The Canton Viaduct is one of the two oldest surviving multiple-arch stone railroad bridges still in active mainline use in the United States. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1999.
• The viaduct's chief engineer was William Gibbs McNeill, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His assistant was Major General George Washington Whistler, father of the well-known painter, James Whistler, who, it is said, became an artist in contradiction to his father's desire that he choose engineering as a profession.
• The viaduct contains 21 arches and it was designed with hollow spaces between its walls, strengthened by solid buttresses above the arches.
• The Viaduct bridges the east branch of the Neponset River (called the "Canton River" on old maps), and is built on a wide 1° curve crossing the valley.

The cache is a 6 X 2 -inch cylinder, with just enough room for small trade items. There was a Jefferson for the first-to-find. There is also a benchmark located at the viaduct, as well as a letterbox and a coded message (see images). You may find it helpful to look at the Google Maps plot of the site (see link below) before beginning your search.