Hoop Pole Creek Traditional Cache
Tandemguy: A previous cacher found the cache on the ground and took it rather than look for where it was hooked under the bench. As I no longer frequent this area, I am opting to archive the cache. Someone else is free to place another cache in this amazing location.
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Size: 
(micro)
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The Hoop Pole Creek Nature Trail winds through the Hoop Pole Creek's maritime forest and into an estuarine ecosystem. Here you can see maritime forest, salt marshes, dune ridges, estuaries and native flora and fauna. You may see a variety of songbirds, wading birds and birds of prey, deer, racoons, butterflies, dragonflies, turtles, lizards and snakes. About a 0.7 mile stroll, round trip, on flat terrain. Park in the adjacent shopping center parking lot.
This 31 acre tract of land was purchased in 1997 by the NC Coastal Federation which placed a conservation easement on the property, forever protecting this area for its outstanding water quality benefits and preserving its historical and recreational values.
The property has had a variety of names throughout its history including: Cheeseman's Inlet, Hoop Pole Creek, Hoop Hole Creek, Hog Hill and Sugarloaf Properties. The name Hoop Pole came from a section of bark peeled from a young sapling or pole that was then used to secure the ends of wooden barrels before metal hoops came into use. These poles were gathered from a forest near the place now called Hoop Pole Creek.
Pick up an interpretive trail guide from a box located near the trail head and learn about this unique plant community on your way to the cache. It's an easy, flat, less than one mile trip from parking to the cache and back.
If you've seen the movie, "The Hobbit," some of the trees in the maritime forest along the trail may remind you of the fantastical trees in the movie.
Hoop Pole Creek during the Civil War: With successes in 1862 at Roanoke Island and New Bern, Union commanders set their sights on Fort Macon, built between 1826 and 1834 to protect Beaufort Inlet. Garrisons had manned the facility at irregular intervals leading up to the Civil War, usually only during periods of international tension. Consequently, the masonry fort by the 1860s had begun to deteriorate.
Morehead City, just across the sound, was a strategic target, being the terminus of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad. Defending the fort in mid-March 1862 was the only significant Confederate force still operating on the coast between Wilmington and Norfolk. Gen. Ambrose Burnside selected Gen. John G. Parke to capture the fort. Early on, Parke hoped but failed to compel the Confederates to surrender without resistance. He set up his headquarters in Carolina City, a village of about 100 inhabitants just outside Morehead City.
Forces on both sides amassed their weapons and the siege extended over four weeks, from March 23 to April 26, 1862. Parke and the Union troops selected Hoop Pole Creek, about four miles west of the fort and directly across the sound from Carolina City, as their landing site. On April 8 the first skirmish took place between the Union landing force and the detachments from the fort. Union troops sets up artillery positions on the banks leading up to the fort from the west. It took ten days for the Federals to wear down the Confederates. In the end the rebels’ firepower was no match for the Union’s and the fort’s commander, Col. Moses J. White, posted the white flag. Given the intensity of the firing, casualties on both sides were remarkably light.
You are looking for a camouflaged micro hidden near nature trail station 13. BYOP.
Congratulations to bhchick12 for the FTF!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
eraebp RF