In my research on the mine, I learned that there were a number of other mines in the area, one of which suffered a similar fate to the Richland Mine, namely the Nelson Mine, which according to maps, is nearby.  I also found:

The NY Times article on the disaster (be sure to click the link to see the full article) and

a transcription of an article from the  Evening Herald Syracuse New York 1901-05-28.

(I’ve printed all  of these to PDF in case the links should expire…)

I also found another article apparently from Trenton Evening Times, Trenton NJ 21 Dec 1895 on (I think) another mine explosion in the area.  I thought this might have been the Nelson Mine, but it isn’t cited in the article, so I’m not sure.  If it is the Nelson Mine, there’s an apparent date discrepancy.  This article on the Nelson Mine from the Ticonderoga Sentinel New York 1902-04-03 puts the Nelson Mine disaster in 1902, after the 1901 Richland Mine disaster.  Perhaps the 1895 disaster was a different mine still.

Fascinating stuff.  In another post, I’ll put up some maps of the mines in the area.   One of the things I noticed was that the actual location of the Richland Mine entrance doesn’t match the USGS topo maps of the area… but that’s a subject for my next post!

** Addendum – while poking around some more, I found a digitized copy of the book:

So, Elizabeth and I decided to do this one on Saturday.  Boy, I’m glad we did.  The geocache is just inside an abandoned mine near Dayton TN in an area that I’ve seen referred to as the Bowater Pocket Wilderness and the Laurel-Snow Pocket Wilderness. Tennessee DNR calls it the Laurel-Snow Pocket Wilderness.  Locals tell me that it “used” to be called Bowater…  In any case, you can find the DNR site on the place here.

What we found when we arrived was nothing short of amazing.  I’ll have some other posts on the Wilderness and other geocaches here shortly.  As for this one though, we had the opportunity to meet one of the locals who was busy picking up some trash.  I think his name was Arthur.  He told us all about the history of the area and in particular of the mine that the geocache was in.  It’s called the Richland Mine and back in the early 1900s there was an explosion and collapse at the mine that trapped and killed 21 miners.  He tells me that his grandfather was one of the men working in the mine, although he wasn’t one of the ones killed.  Apparently, a number of the bodies of the miners were not recovered and are still entombed in the mine.  Others who were recovered and some that died later of injuries sustained are apparently buried in wilderness near the mine.  Arthur tells me he has looked for evidence of those graves and so far has found none.

Among other things he told us, he indicated that we should use extreme caution if we choose to venture off the marked trail, especially above the mining areas.  Apparently there are a number of ventilation shafts for the old mines that open up above them, and most are not covered.  It would suck to fall in one!

After chatting with Arthur for a while, we finally got to venture into the mine a short distance. Arthur had warned us about venturing too far into the mine, because there was a shaft back in there that dropped an unknown distance.  That wasn’t an issue for us though (not that we would have anyway) because the mine was flooded and we couldn’t get much further than about 20ft in without getting into the water.  We ended up not finding the geocache because of the water.  I would have waded a bit, but I couldn’t be sure about the depth and didn’t want to do anything foolish.  We got a bunch of pictures too:

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Here’s the page on Geocaching.com:  Mario’s Tower, the World’s Most Difficult Geocache

And… here’s some images:

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The bridge is located in Brown County, Ohio and spans the White Oak Creek.  The Brown County Tourism Board has this to say about the bridge:

Bridge No. 35-08-05, New Hope Covered Bridge

Located off U.S. Route 68, southwest of New Hope, this is a 188-foot Howe truss with laminated arches. The bridge on this site was built in 1872 and replaced by the present bridge in 1878. Josiah Bryant, well known Brown County bridge builder, was awarded the 1878 contract at $13.95 per lineal foot. The New Hope Bridge is among the longer single-span covered bridges in the state.

In 1902, the county employed Louis S. Bower, Sr., of Fleming County, Kentucky to renovate this bridge and he added eleven-ply laminated arches. In 1977, Brown County hired his son, Louis S. “Stocker” Bower, Jr. to supervise more repairs. The bridge unerwent extensive repairs in 2003-04 and is currently closed to traffic.

If you actually want to try to find the letterbox, here are the clues:

At the N-E end of the bridge at 3 paces away there are two poles you will see.
Behind the second pole is a large rock.The box is under the large rock
hidden by a smaller rock at the opening of its resting place.Remove the
small rock and you will see the covered bridge box .

I don’t know if it’s still there.  I didn’t learn about the box until I got home, so I haven’t found it.  The box was apparently placed in 2002…