[GeoStL] Could this be a job for...Geocachers???

-

Time Capsule Left by Teddy Roosevelt Still Missing but Searchers Give Up
By Peter Zuckerman Associated Press Writer
Published: May 20, 2003



PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The world may never know the precise location of a
time capsule left by Teddy Roosevelt on a Portland hillside one century ago.
The Oregon Historical Society has decided against digging around a 40-foot
monument to Lewis and Clark to see if the time capsule - a microwave-size
copper box filled with relics - is buried there.

"It would be foolhardy," said Norma Paulus, executive director of the
historical society.

Questions about the whereabouts of the time capsule had created something of
a scavenger hunt over the past few weeks.

The search started with an announcement that the former president's
great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, would come to Portland on May 28 to
mark the 100th anniversary of the day his great-grandfather dedicated the
Portland Lewis and Clark Monument.

The Historical Society had considered retrieving the time capsule and
opening it during the May 28 ceremony.

But nobody knows where it is. Builders constructed the monument in stages
over five years, with one stage often covering up the previous, making it
hard for historians to figure out what's underground and pinpoint where the
capsule is.

Furthermore, builders placed several slabs of granite, and newspaper
accounts and building records are vague about which slab Roosevelt placed
the capsule under.

The capsule contains an 1856 10-cent postage stamp, a crystal from the city
museum, a piece of wood from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a charter of
the city of Portland and copper pennies from 1900-1903, according to news
reports.

Preparing for the visit by Roosevelt's great-grandson, the Oregon Historical
Society scoured newspaper accounts of the time capsule's burial, but was
unable to determine its location.

People from across the country proposed ideas on how to locate it.

A psychic from New York mailed the Oregon Historical Society a diagram
showing the box's supposed location. An engineer suggested banging a tuning
fork against the granite monument and listening for hollow sounds. Engineers
from several places recommended blasting the structure with a
ground-penetrating radar to determine its location.

But the Oregon Historical Society is calling off the search.

According to Paulus, the executive director, paying to dismantle parts of
the Lewis and Clark Monument would cut into the organization's education
funds. And the society doesn't want to do anything that would damage the
monument.

Roosevelt's great-grandson will still come May 28 to make a speech at the
anniversary.

AP-ES-05-20-03 2308EDT



 ****************************************************************************
 Our WebPage!  Http://WWW.GeoStL.com  
 Mail List Info. http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=geocaching
 Mail List FAQ's: http://www.freelists.org/help/questions.html 
 ****************************************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list:
 send an email to geocaching-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the 
Subject field

Other related posts: