Menomonie's Theater on the Yellowstone Trail Multi-Cache
Menomonie's Theater on the Yellowstone Trail
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This multi takes you first to the Mabel Tainter Theater in downtown Menomonie, and then to the Sanna "Tourist Park." Both locations are right on the historic Yellowstone Trail. To follow the Yellowstone Trail from Eau Claire, Take highway E (Cameron Street) to highway 12, and then highway 12 on to Knapp and Baldwin.
At the coordinates above you will find a large stone structure, built as a Memorial to Mabel Tainter, and still used for community theater. The building is also used as the meeting place of Menomonie's Unitarian Universalists.
The Mabel Tainter Memorial Theater is a fully functional Victorian theater. The Mabel Tainter building includes a lavish 313-seat Victorian theater and a historic reading room.
The exterior of the building is constructed of Dunnville sandstone quarried along the Red Cedar River southeast of Downsville. The interior of the building contains hand stenciled walls and ceilings, marble staircase and floors, leaded stained glass windows, walnut and oak woodwork, brass fixtures and four fireplaces each built with a different stone or technique.
The Mabel Tainter Theater still contains the original pipe organ. The organ has a total of 1597 pipes and 28 stops. The pipes range from 2 inches to 16 feet. The organ was originally water powered, but it was later converted to electric. One of the many original functions of the Memorial was to serve as home to the Unitarian Society of Menomonie with Reverend Henry Doty Maxson serving as their first minister.
More information on the Mabel Tainter Theater can be found at: http://www.mabeltainter.com/
To find the final cache, you will need to go to Sanna Park, which was a park used by Yellowstone Trail travelers to camp for the night. To park, go thru the stone pillars at:
44.53.631
91.55.943
But as you do, notice the glass embedded in the pillars, with the south pillar having the word "tourist" and the north pillar having the word "park." This was the sign that weary tourists looked for when looking for a place to camp for the night. (Interestingly, the most recent Dunn County tourist brochure omits mention of Sanna Park.)
A 1924 Wisconsin automobile guide noted that the Tourist Park camp was 10 acres and offered parking space, benches and tables, water, bathing, boating, fishing, dancing in several pavilions, a comfort station, and a caretaker.
More information on the Menomonie Tourist Park, now known as Sanna Park can be found at:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/archstories/motels/auto_camps.asp
The final cache is near here, on the edge of Sanna Park.
Find the final at:
44.53.ABC
91.55.DEF
A = Corner that still has the coal chute present (SW = 2; NW = 4; NE = 6; SE = 8)
B = 9
C = Number of the letters in the last name of the First Unitarian Minister to use the building.
D = The fourth digit of the year the building was constructed
E = The number of round corners of the Mabel Tainter Theater
F = The month that Tainter donated the building to the community.
This is one of several caches I have placed along the route of the historic Yellowstone Trail. The trail is a historic motor route that went across Wisconsin from 1918 to 1930. The Wisconsin portion of the Yellowstone Trail is 406 miles long, starting at the state line south of Kenosha and going north, and then west to Hudson. The Wisconsin segment is just a part of one of America’s first transcontinental auto routes, a 3,754-mile long road that started in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts and went to Puget Sound, Washington.
More information on the Yellowstone Trail, including maps can be found at
http://www.yellowstonetrail.org/id18.htm
February 2, 2008 update: The Mable Tainter Theatre has been renovated and an addition tacked onto the north side. If you get a chance to visit while it is open, be sure to visit.
You may notice that the addition looks like different colored rock, but in fact they were careful to quarry rock for the addition from the same quarry, so over time, the addition will blend in and look the same color. Notice how discolored the old stonework looks compared to the newer stone, and imagine how the building must have looked when all of the stone was new. Personally, I like the charecter of the discolored old stone, and I hope they dont try to sandblast it to look new again.
I also moved the final cache location about 100 feet, and upgraded it from a micro to a small.
This cache placed by a member of:
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Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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