Indiana Spirit Quest #383: A Secret Place Traditional Cache

The Indiana Spirit Quest series of geocaches will take you to a number of historic cemeteries built by Hoosier Pioneers. In just over a year and a half, the quest has grown to over three hundred seventy caches hidden in thirty-eight Indiana counties, and two Ohio counties, and the hiders have grown to eighteen cacher teams, most of which of which are comprised of Dogs and their Humans. Over 800 cacher teams have logged over 9,100 finds. One cache machine found 102 ISQ caches in a single day (daylight hours only).

Digital Photographs taken by Lead Dog

Welcome to Old Ulrey Cemetery hidden away in Jackson Township in Kosckiusko County. You may have to find an appropriate place to park and then hike in to this site.

Tom Meierding has always been fascinated by graveyards. Over the last 25 years, he's visited more than 700 cemeteries and measured about 15,000 tombstones to see what kind of environmental secrets they might reveal. Meierding is a geomorphologist at the University of Delaware. He uses the tombstone data to determine past environmental conditions and compare them with modern pollution levels—information that's useful to art conservationists, policy makers, urban planners, and others.

"Cemeteries have been among the most durable of cultural landscapes, preserved even in cities where competition for land is intense," he said. "If you know the scientific basis for environmental degradation, you can fight it more effectively."

His tombstone studies showed, for example, that much of the degradation to stones, monuments, and buildings in the Northeast United States is the result of environmental factors of 70 years ago. The assumption had been that the destruction was caused by the more recent effects of acid rain.

"The problem with studying weathering in nature is that you have no date on the rocks, no way to know if they've been moved, or how long they've been in a place," said Meierding.

Marble tombstones, on the other hand, offer an ideal testing medium because they are usually engraved with dates.

When he mapped his findings, he found that the most serious degradation had occurred in areas where there was heavy coal burning 60 to 70 years ago.

"A lot of the damage that was assumed to be relatively recent actually occurred in the 1930s, when industrial sites were located in the cities," he said.

Tombstone-based research also can be useful in pinpointing some issues of environmental concern that merit in-depth study.

"In the 1980s, the government gave out a lot of money—in the hundreds of millions, I think—to study the effects of acid rain," Meierding said. "If they had been able to map some of the effects of air pollution first, they would have been much better able to target the research dollars."

Fortunately, the deterioration of historic buildings, monuments, and cemetery stones has slowed dramatically since World War II, in part because of clean air legislation, he said.

When he was studying cemeteries in mountain ghost towns, he visited a cemetery in Leadville, Colorado, where the old gravestones were in very bad shape. "I thought it was the effects of frost, until I mapped the findings," he said. There were many other towns at the same elevation with no damage, so frost could be eliminated as the cause.

"It turned out," Meierding said, "that at one point in time, Leadville had been the smelter capital of the West, processing gold, silver, and other ores mined during the Gold Rush era." Pollution from the smelting process had accelerated deterioration of the tombstones.

The importance of research such this, said Meierding, is simple: "You can't deal with the effects of pollution if you don't know the cause."

The Tombstones fall over and are comsumed by the turf....

This place has been long neglected...

FIND LOGS ON THIS CACHE THAT INDICATE NIGHT CACHING WILL BE DELETED WITHOUT NOTICE!! OH, YEAH!

The cache container is aplastic peanut butter jar. Please screw lid on correctly and tightly. BYOP. You MUST sign the log to claim a smilie. If you cache at night, or don't sign the log, or reveal the additional hint in your log, or don't fulfill any additional requirements, your find log will be deleted without notice... The cache is not located near a grave... If you find a fallen US flag, please stick it back in the ground. As always, please be respectful, and cache in, trash out. xxxxxxxx

None genuine without this official SixDogTeam seal. Digital photographs taken by Lead Dog, (C) 2005 by RikSu Outfitters with Kodak equipment, unless otherwise noted.

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"Indiana Spirit Quest" is brought to you by the following fellows of GEOISQ*: SixDogTeam (Earthdog Patrick, Lead Dog, Wheel Dog) Kodiak Kid, THE SHADOW, Team Shydog, Rupert2, Torry, ~Mystery Dog~, Team Tigger International, bbSurveyors, Dover Duo,Los Xile, Prairie Partners, WilliamsFamGC, Bean Blossum Gang, Team Itchy & Scratchy, Wishbone 86, krisNjoe, Angelina Jolie, and Bikinibottomfeeders. If you are interested in spreading the Quest to your neck of the woods AND WOULD LIKE TO JOIN US, email SixDogTeam.

*Grand Exalted Order of the Indiana Spirit Quest

** THIS IS A GENUINE INDIANA SPIRIT QUEST CACHE**

NO NIGHT CACHING!!