At the Head of the Nation

We had a lovely lunch with number one son in Brockville today, followed by a little shopping and then off to the boonies to hunt for treasure. Two new spots had popped up in my e-mail this week, down in the area of Carpenters Tomb. We decided to go take a look on the way home.

One was quite similar to Carpenters Tomb, though much smaller in size. I’d love to show you but that would spoil the discovery for other geocachers reading this. (the rest of you can contact me and I’ll send you a picture, if you like). Anyway, it wasn’t hard to find and I didn’t have to feed any bugs to get to the site.

The other cache was another matter. Luckily we came well equipped with bug spray and made good use of it before venturing into the woods. It was feeding time by then, you can be sure. The land is posted as "no trespassing, and no hunting" but I’ve now seen another geocacher post a picture standing near that sign saying "Oh, there WILL be hunting here today!" Actually, it didn’t take much hunting, but it was a lovely walk. The cache posting tells us about this sign, but also says that’s to keep others out. Apparently they don’t mind having the geocachers as we are a good bunch for cleaning up any trash found along the trail, and not
leaving any of our own.

The trail is well maintained, and leads to a couple of wooden bridges across Fern bank Creek that is apparently the headwaters of the Nation River. There is a mystery to be found and identified at the cache. I was so busy looking for, and then at, the cache that I almost missed the mysterious thing we were supposed to identify. Well, it’s not too mysterious once you find it, but it is the biggest one I’ve ever seen. Once again, I’m not about to spoil the fun for any geocachers by spilling the beans here.

All in all, it was a very nice day, especially since it didn’t rain and the sun actually came out for most of the day.

Carpenters Tomb....is NOT at the Cemetary

There is treasure in these parts, so the story goes. It seems a man named Carpenter made his fortune selling furs and honey to the traders way back in the days of Upper and Lower Canada. He never married, or had any children, so he hid his gold and money somewhere on his property, to protect it from the thieves and pirates while he was out working his trap lines.

We had never heard this story before, and went for a drive one day, (August 26, 2007) to see what we could find. We knew we were in the right area when we came upon Carpenter’s Cemetery. That, in itself is worth taking time to explore. There is a curious sign that says "Enter at your own Risk". I’ve never seen one like that at a graveyard before, though perhaps they were afraid some of the older, leaning tombstones might fall on visitors. Unfortunately some vandals gave many of them a helping hand and now there are lots of stones that have been tipped over or broken in half. The orange flags in the picture indicate where there was damage done. There were an awful lot of orange flags, unfortunately. Luckily someone has been found willing to do the repairs at this historic site.

Just down the road from that there is a trail through the woods. Following that we discovered a pile of rocks. Now, I’ve seen many farmers pile up rocks from their fields, but I’ve never seen a rock pile like this. It’s a large rectangle, larger than my own home, so certainly much larger than any foundation someone of those days would attempt. The edges of the pile are stacked like one would, if building a stone wall though. The thing is, this rectangle is also filled in with stone, to a height of about 5 feet. It’s flat on top and you can actually walk around up there. If Mr. Carpenter hid his fortune in that rock pile, it’s definitely safe from me. It made my muscles hurt just to think of moving all those rocks. This rock pile has become known, locally, as Carpenters Tomb.

Someone suggested to me that perhaps it was there to distract people, and that the treasure was hidden somewhere else on the property. Well, I know people have been looking for it for years, but the rest of the property is now very flat, with trees planted in straight rows. I suspect there was a lot of digging and earth moving done for that to happen. Any treasure that had been buried would have been found.

The only treasure we found that day was the geocache, hidden exactly where the coordinates indicated. I wouldn’t mind going back there and poking about again someday though.
They have requested that no pictures of the actual tomb be posted, so you will just have to imagine it.....unless you want to go look for yourself. It’s not far from Brockville, Ontario, just off the county Rd 16.

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