Hello to our friends and fellow geocachers from Clinton, Mississippi!

We are still staying in the Springridge RV Park along our way to the Natchez Trace Parkway to Nashville, TN. Today, we are visiting the Vicksburg National Military Park to do a virtual cache and drive the 16 mile tour and stop and see as many of the 1340 monuments as we can. The virtual cache we are doing is GCG107 “Vicksburg National Military Park”. It is a four step cache where you visit 4 sets of coordinates and gather information from the plaques or monuments to email to the cache owner the answers to his questions.

After we finished the cache we visited the USS Cairo Museum which was fantastic to see. The USS Cairo is an old Union ironclad warship that was the first armored warship to be sunk by an electronically detonated mine.  On December 12, 1862, on the Yazoo River, a Confederate torpedo tore open Cairo’s bow. The Union gunboat sank in 12 minutes. The torpedo that sank the Cairo was a crude apparatus. Lt. Commander Selfridge may have been less than cautious in waters known to contain torpedoes because so many of the Confederates weapons had been duds. Two Confederate sailors, Acting Masters Zedekiah McDaniel and Francis M. Ewing had charge of placing the torpedoes. Volunteers, whose names are lost to history, hid behind the river bank and detonated the explosive with an electric charge. It was very interesting to see how they had restored the Cairo, which had been sitting on the bottom of the Yazoo River for over 100 years.

We also visited the Vicksburg National Cemetery which encompasses 117.85 acres, and includes 18,000 graves. Graves of Civil War soldiers totaling 17,077, of which 12,909 are unknown. An additional 1,280 graves are occupied by soldiers who participated in the Indian Wars, Spanish-American War, World Wars 1 and 2, and the Korean Conflict.

Our next cache was kind of a cute cache entitled GC1524D “Cache Something Fishy TB Hotel”. The story of this cache is an interesting story. It was a tribute to the cache owner’s father, a different type of fisherman- a “hand grabber”. The swing set in the front yard of the cache owner’s home wasn’t just for swinging; it was used to hang giant 100 pound catfish to be skinned after being caught by hand. Fried catfish is about as Southern as you can get, especially in Mississippi, and catching these huge fish by hand was quite common in this area.

Next cache was GCH32G “Soldier’s Rest”, located in Cedar Hill Cemetery. The City of Vicksburg served as a major hospital center in the early years of the Civil War. A section in this cemetery was set aside to provide a fitting burial place for Confederate soldiers who died of sickness or wounds. Known as the “Soldiers Rest”, the plot is the final resting place for an estimated 5,000 Confederate soldiers. As most of these men did not meet the criteria established by Congress for burial in the national cemetery, their remains were not moved and still rest today in Cedar Hill Cemetery.

The next day we drove into Jackson, MS to do some caches. When we printed the cache pages, it was recommended that these caches be done during the day, which to us seemed a little unusual, at least until we got to the cache locations. There were 4 or 5 caches that were in one of the dirtiest run down slum sections of Jackson. We proceeded to find the caches during the daytime, but now that we look back, all but one of the caches has been archived. The only interesting cache we did was GC12Y56 “Winter’s Woods”, where a Civil War action had occurred on May 14, 1863, and from July 9-17, 1863. The battle of Jackson was part of the Vicksburg Campaign in the American Civil War. Union commander Major General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee defeated Confederate General Joseph E. Johnson, seizing the city, cutting supply lines, and opening the path to the west and the Siege of Vicksburg.

The last cache we are going to tell you about this month is GCHZBB “Tour Vicksburg”, a 6 stop multi cache that took us on a trip around the city. Stage 1 of the cache was at Planters’ Hall, Circa 1834, which housed the Vicksburg branch of the Planters’ Bank of Mississippi until 1842, as well as the officers of the 28th Louisiana Regiment during the Vicksburg Siege.

Stage 2 took us to the Old Courthouse Museum, circa 1858, which was originally built to house the court house in Vicksburg. It was built on the highest hill in the city by 100 highly skilled slave artisans and was finished in 1860 at a cost of $100,000. Its past guests have included Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Booker T. Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and William McKinley. During the Civil War, it was the target of much shelling from the Union Army, but received only one major hit. In 1953, it was hit by a tornado and fell into disrepair and was neglected. In 1947, restoration was started and after it had been finished it opened as a museum.

Stage 3 was at Pemberton Headquarters (Willis-Cowan House), circa 1835. It was the headquarters of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, who commanded the Confederate forces during the siege of Vicksburg, and on July 3, 1863, the decision was made here to surrender the city.

Stage 4 was at a group of Italianate townhouses, circa 1872, that were owned by some of Vicksburg founding fathers, and one was even owned by Jefferson Davis’s niece.

Stage 5 was located in the downtown area close to the 1953 Tornado Museum. On December 4, 1953, the day started out normal and the downtown area was all decorated for Christmas. At 5:35 PM, a tornado wind roared through downtown and destroyed everything in its path. The aftermath was unbelievable, motorists were killed as they drove through the streets, debris buried victims, phone and power lines were down and the Saturday matinee ended early with a massive roof collapse on children. The toll was 38 dead, 200 injured, and 1200 left homeless.

Then it was off to Stage 6, the final stage, which was located down the street in a small park which we walked to and found the final cache container easily under a set of stairs.

After we found this cache we walked around the downtown area looking at the historic and interesting places we didn’t see on our first trip through downtown. We saw a historic marker dedicated to Tobias Gibson, the Father to Methodism in MS. He was sent to Vicksburg in 1799, as a missionary and he founded many of the early churches there.

We also saw the Vicksburg Waterfront Murals, 25 murals all hand painted on the side of the flood wall in the downtown area separating the Mississippi River and Vicksburg. The murals all painted by Robert Dafford capture the past, present and future of Vicksburg and its role in American history.

Well that’s it for this month! We hope everyone is well, and we are looking forward to seeing everyone at the bowling meeting this Saturday! Also, don’t forget to sign up for Christmas Bash 2009 on December 12th at 2:00 PM at Logan’s Roadhouse.

‘Til then Happy Caching!

Tweety & Coach……….ftjak
Dori & Dick

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