Mountain Park Memories Traditional Cache
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Cache is an Ammo Can on the outskirts of an amusement park dump that was abandoned in the 1960's.
Area has lots of broken glass, NOT GOOD FOR CHILDREN!
Park at N42'14.518 w72'37.414, carefully cross street, walk north past small stream on your left (you won't need to cross stream if you do this) and enter woods north of stream. There is no path to this one, be prepared to bushwack a little.
This is not far down the road from the 666 cache.
In 1888, William Loomis, one of the Company's directors, took ownership of the Holyoke Street Railway Company. In the following years, he purchased 365 acres (1.5 km2) of "cow pastures with scenery" on the side of Mount Tom. In 1894, Loomis constructed an open-air stage there, which attracted many patrons. The next year the trolley line was extended up to that point. In 1897, Loomis applied for and was granted a charter with the state for building a "pleasure resort." A dance hall, open air restaurant, switchback railway and merry-go-round were constructed. A unique cable railway was created to take visitors to a new building at the summit of the mountain. It was from this building President William McKinley stated that the view from Mount Tom was the most beautiful in the world.
In the 1980s, Massachusetts entered a recession. The park was still popular. Easter (the traditional opening day) of 1987 saw one of the largest crowds in the park's history. But there were a few difficulties. Massachusetts eliminated its Blue Laws, which prevented merchants from opening on Sundays, traditionally one of the busiest days of the week for the park. People began going to the malls on Sundays, and so what was once the busiest day for the park became the slowest. Even though the park had very few accidents, liability insurance costs were skyrocketing, devouring almost all of the park's profit. James Parsons the head of the game concessions and known to parkgoers as Pippo, died in 1982. His passing was followed by George Dean, who had brought many corporate outings into the park. So at the end of the 1987 season, with the impending retirement of Roger Fortin (who had been Collins' friend and park supervisor for 30 years) Collins decided to sell Mountain Park. Many hoped a new buyer could be found. Collins advertised the entire property (with all the rides and equipment) in trade magazines for $4 million. But with the recession there were no interested parties. Over the next two years, the rides were sold and dismantled.
The Holyoke community did manage to rally and purchase the carousel, now the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round located at Holyoke Heritage State Park in downtown Holyoke.
Beginning in 1994, a series of fires destroyed most of the remaining buildings and all of the structures were bulldozed in 2003.
Starting contents for this cache:
log book/ pen
Cache camera, PLEASE TAKE YOUR PICTURE AND LEAVE THIS IN CACHE
Several handmade signature swag necklaces
Never used Fossil wallet
Costume Jewelry
Scented pencils
A couple bottle openers
Survival whistle
other stuff
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Arrq n gver punatr...
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
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