The American term skid row is used to refer to the rundown area of
a city where alcoholics and vagrants congregate. There is a
formally identified Skid Row in Seattle and Los Angeles as well as
informally identified districts in almost every major American
city, such as The Bowery in New York City. The term was
memorialized in the song Skid Row from the musical Little Shop of
Horrors.
The first skid row was Skid Road (Yesler Way) in Seattle, where
logs were skidded into the water for delivery to Henry Yesler's
lumber mills. After the onset of the Great Depression, the area
went into decline, and skid row became synonymous with being a bad
neighborhood. (Wickipedia)
Skid Road: Fact or Myth?
Doc Maynard and Carson Boren's donation to Yesler included a narrow
strip of land between the waterfront and upland forests.
Conventional histories have long maintained that logs were sent
sliding down this steep "Mill Street" (now Yesler Way), earning it
the nickname "Skid Road." Based on more recent research by
HistoryLink staff historian Greg Lange, this seems unlikely.
Yesler's mill was actually oriented to take in raw logs from
Elliott Bay, not from the land, and Mill Street itself was steeply
canted north to south and interrupted by a deep ravine near present
day 4th Avenue making east-west transport of logs very
difficult.
In the mid-1800s, the term Skid Road was commonly applied to
logging camps throughout the region. The area around Yesler's Mill
may have acquired this nickname by such association. The phrase was
not popularlized until the early twentieth century, when crusading
local prohibitionist Rev. Mark Matthews (1867-1940) invoked Skid
Road to condemn the saloons and brothels clustered in an
all-but-official vice district south of Yesler Way -- long after
both Henry Yesler and his mill had passed into history. In later
usage, Skid Road morphed into "Skid Row" to denote any derelict
urban neighborhood -- and Pioneer Square definitely qualified
between the Great Depression and its restoration in the 1970s.
(HistoryLink.org)
Two interesting books on some of the aspects of the subect are
"Skid Road, An Informal Portrait of Seattle" by Murray Morgan and
"You Owe Yourself a Drunk, An Ethnography of Urban Nomads" by James
P. Spradley.
This webcam cache
utilizes one of the WSDOT Puget Sound
Traffic Cameras. Its placement allows you to get a photo
of yourself without putting yourself in danger. Once you have
everything ready, proceed to the posted coordinates. Look up
to the South and see the traffic camera. Have your geocaching
phone-a-friend surf to this trafficam page and then quickly
save the photo by right-clicking on the photo and selecting
"Save Picture As...".
Once the photo is saved, you may return home and log your find. Be
sure to upload the photo with your log entry in order to get the
'find'. No photo, no find. Plus, you must also find two more
Waypoints and the Final Cache on your self-guided tour of Skid Road
to log this find.
To find the Waypoint #2, look around near the photo (Waypoint
#1) location for coordinates to replace the final 3 coordinates of
both the lat and long. Go to Waypoint #2.
At Waypoint #2, depending on the time of day, you will be in the
midst of a modern day Skid Road. Otherwise known as Muscatel
Meadow. Look for a historical marker. Find the year of the event
cited on the marker. Take the last 3 numbers in the year and divide
by 4 and then subtract 20. This number is ABC. Count the number of
letters engraved on the marker, not on the plaque, but in the 3
words on the side/top of the marker. Multiply that number by 3 and
subtract 1. That number is DE.
Waypoint #3 is at: 47-36-0DE
122-20-ABC
At Waypoint #3 you will find another historical marker relating
the original Skid Road. There are two different years on the
plaque. Subtract the oldest year from the most recent year. The
result is FGH.
The final cache is at: 47-36-((F+G+H)*34)-3
122-20-((F+G+H)*49)
The utmost of stealth is required at the final cache location!!!!
Please bring your own writing implement. Your are looking for a
small altoids container painted Sequoia green. Room for trading the
smallest of items.
The photo above was the live image from the webcam when you loaded
this page. Your friend may refresh this page to get an updated
photo. Alternatively, you could go directly to the WSDOT
page for this camera. The images below show the two different
views. Remember, you need the north view. Cache On!
