GC5RCH3 C of M #14
Type: Multi | Size: Micro | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: kekj @ | Hide Date: 04/12/2015 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N38° 44.839 W108° 03.970 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0
               

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Discover and enjoy a portion of the Delta story in its murals

The wealth of murals in Delta, Colorado, created by local artists celebrates the heritage of this community.  Most are located along Main Street. This series is numbered in the order in which the murals were painted.

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It all started in 1986 when the city was awarded funds for an urban renewal project.  A portion of these funds were set aside to begin the “mural project”.  The success of this project has led to the expansion of the Delta Public Art Committee which is currently continuing the mural project and initiating a new program for sculpture and other 3 dimensional media art in public places.

In this series of multi-caches, the coordinates given are a virtual (the mural) from which you will gather information to find the second stage which will contain the log to be signed.  The second stage has a connection to the first, perhaps only in the owners’ minds, but can you read our minds?

 

Frontiersmen followed Indian paths or blazed their own trails to travel through the country in the early days of settlement.  Later homesteaders cooperated and widened paths to accommodate teams and wagons.

Travel was difficult and tedious over unimproved, rutty roads, and settlers therefor had little or no markets for their products. Delta became the shipping point of the county when railroad service began here in the fall of 1882. Initially the lines came from Pueblo to Gunnison - Montrose - Delta and ended in Grand Junction! There were no rails from Denver direct to GJT in those early days!

That year the construction of the D&RG (Denver and Rio Grande) narrow gauge railroad opened the way to more satisfactory freight and passenger service.  The narrow gauge trains and engines were small and narrow, and this section of the railroad was known as the “Baby Train of America”.  These trains traveled at a slow rate of speed and were an easy prey for bandits who held up and robbed the passengers on more than one occasion.

The construction of the railroad also offered employment to some of the local residents, and the railroad camps and nearby mines afforded a ready beef market.  For a time, freighting continued to be hauled by team and wagon.

The D&RG first opened for service into Delta September 22, 1882.  When considering the former Ute reservation had not been opened for settlement until September 3, 1881 and Delta was not yet one year old, this is rather remarkable.  Standard gauging of the line between Montrose and Grand Junction was completed in 1906.  A narrow gauge road was extended from Delta to Somerset in 1902, and this portion standard gauged in 1906.

This mural shows the “new” Delta passenger depot built in 1917; the “old” depot of 1882 became the freight depot that can be seen in old photos (at N38 43.982 W108 04.406) - several hundred yds south of the finial cache.

A little known factoid of this mural is that the figure in the foreground is a self portrait of one of the artists, Seth Weber, as a young man! He also painted the "Newspaper" mural ?C of M #13 - GC5RCJK? in which he again does a self portrait depicting himself as the newsboy! See if you can see the similarity between the two!

To find the second stage of this multi cache and sign the log:

To solve for North subtract from the given coordinates  0.A B C

A= the last digit of engine number

B= The last digit of signature date

C= number of fruit crates on freight wagon

To solve for West add to the given coordinates  0.D E F

D= the number of items on the freight wagon

E= the sum of B and the number of baby buggies on the mural

F= number of cattle cars attached to the train in the mural

Due to rails being moved over the years, we were not positive where the 1917 depot depicted in the mural stood.  However, from old aerial photos, it appears that it stood about where the second stage of this multi is waiting for you to sign the log. The rail bed of the time was in the middle of the modern truck bypass you now see. The tracks were moved several hundred feet West to accommodate the bypass constructed the fall of 2014. With all rail traffic now coming from Denver and over/through the mountains to Grand Junction, those tracks now end in Montrose. Be careful of traffic as you approach finial GZ.

Additional Waypoints

06/09/2019 By Charlie-n-Geri
Out enjoying the snow-melt up on the Grand Mesa with fishlogger. Been meaning to search for some of the Mural caches for a long time. Enjoyed finding three of them this fine weather day. TFTC

06/09/2019 By fishlogger
after a trip over the mesa to see what snow is left we headed to delta with charlie n geri to try a few murals. solved this one easily and found the cache... to do all these murals would take a month of sundays... TNLN, T4TC, SL.

07/16/2018 By Pauleefox
Out with Whizzkid for the day. Solved the puzzle, checked the coords which were correct. Went to the correct coordinates and came up empty. Owner may want to check this one.

05/20/2018 By LolosDream
Found a string of multi caches today, based out in Delta, Colorado. Wonderful multi's based on the murals in town. After work we popped up to Delta to log all the finals. Fun tour of town. SL. TFTC! Found with Pathfinder33.

05/20/2018 By Pathfinder33
This is the only cache in the series that I did not have completed before we got to Delta. The google street image was not clear enough to positively identify the numbers seeded so a stop was made for those. So we stopped and figured it out quickly. The final container was in hand shortly thereafter. TFTC.

10/19/2017 By kekj
The Ms. has been off to MN for class reunion picking up both a new state souvenir and TB. Just got back into town, needed a place to peg a passel of bugs to a map and show off a bit by visiting them to a couple of caches from one of our most highly prized series. ( Ms. kj has 100's of hrs of research into it) Of the series this is by far my favorite! The cache was DNF a couple of weeks ago so wanted to check status (it was good) but on opening web page I see that the DNF has been cleared

10/12/2017 By gkhill
Back to search using the correct coordinates, we found it! sl TFTC

10/05 2017 DNF Out in the field without the coord checker. Seems we have the wrong cords. We'll have to come back another time to recheck our work.