GCZZSL0 The Legend Of Dawson’s Mine
A mystery cache by Bear-Zinga Hidden: 2014/09/01
Difficulty: * * * * *
Terrain: * * * * *
Size: Regular
In North Carolina, United States
Cache Description:
*** THE CACHE IS NOT AT THE POSTED COORDINATES - TO FIND THIS GEOCACHE YOU NEED TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE ***
Throughout the history of the Appalachian mountains, mining was a huge part of the economy. It was dangerous work. Some men died. Some men became poor. Some men were displaced. Some men got rich.
Some men kept secrets.
This cache will unveil one of the most guarded secrets ever to come from the mountains of North Carolina.
In 1815, Seamus Dawson, a sergeant from the Kentucky 1st Rifle Regiment, returned home from fighting in the British territories of Upper Canada during the War of 1812. He arrived back at his homestead to discover that his young wife had died from tuberculosis. Distraught, and without any offspring to help him tend his farm, he left everything and wandered aimlessly into the Appalachian Mountains.
Three years later he crested the hill at Burkes Peak, deep in the mountains, and sat down on a rock to rest. As he sat there he noticed something shiny in the crevices of the rock. As it turned out, he discovered a very large vein of gold.
He rushed to the nearest town and sent word to his life long friend, Parker Gilmour, to come help him with the mining operations. Parker arrived a few months later. Together they started Dawson’s Mining Consortium and set about the dirty business of extracting gold from the rock.
By 1835, a mining town sprung up in the valley around Burkes Peak, where 150 men and their families lived. All 150 men worked in the mines, producing over a ton of gold a year. All of the gold was brought 53 miles down the rugged mountainside to the closest town, Benettesville, North Carolina, by horse drawn carts.
Seamus Dawson built himself a large brick mansion at the top of Burkes Peak. Seamus also took one of the miners daughters, Victoria Marie Harper, as his bride, and together they had a son.
In the winter of 1837, Seamus and Parker had a falling out and they subsequently dissolved the partnership. History is not clear what they disagreed about. Seamus continued to run Dawson’s Mining Consortium. Parker moved a few miles away to the next peak and began a mining operation of his own.
In the fall of 1838, while escorting a wagon train of gold down the mountain to Bennettesville, Parker Gilmour and 20 of his men mysteriously disappeared. No sign of the men, the horses, or the gold, were ever found again.
In the spring of 1839, Victoria Dawson was reported to have died, along with their second child, due to complications of childbirth. Distraught, and amongst rumours of having gone mad, Seamus shut down the mining company and kicked everyone off his land. He lived the rest of his life alone in his mansion atop of the hill. It is unknown when he died, or what happened to his son.
Rumour has it that Seamus went insane, attacked Parkers wagon train, and stole the gold, which he hid in the cellar of his mansion. He then murdered his wife and kids, and spent the rest of his life alone, guarding his darkest secret.
Rumour also has it that Seamus Dawson’s stash of gold is still out there. Your job is to find it. It will not be easy.
To solve the mystery of Dawson’s Mine, you will have to uncover the coordinates to the final location.
In each of the following 6 caches you will find a code word. You must find the caches and retrieve the code words from each one. It does not matter what order you find them in. The caches are:
GCZZSL1: The Mining Town
GCZZSL2: Wagon Train
GCZZSL3: Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal
GCZZSL4: Something In The Water
GCZZSL5: Gilmour Mining Co.
GCZZSL6: Friendly Giant
All of these caches are hidden in the mountains around the location of Dawson’s Mine. Each cache has a terrain rating of 4 or above, so it will not be easy. Once you have the codes, you may unlock the secrets of the legend by locating and solving GCZZSL9: The Secret Of Dawsons Gold. Only then will you get the coordinates to the final location.
Good luck!
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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Copyright 2015 by Dave DeBaeremaeker. All Rights Reserved.
