Newberry Springs Route 66 Centennial: Historic Preservation and Geocaching Adventures

Welcome to the Outdoor Adventure Series! In today’s episode, we're joined by local community leader, Brian Fisher—affectionately known as Mr. Geocache—to explore the hidden stories and adventures of Newberry Springs, California.

Tune in as Brian recounts his journey to this quiet desert community, describing its tranquil charm and the unique history that surrounds it. Discover how Brian, a retired Marine base worker turned passionate historian, is now at the forefront of efforts to preserve the fascinating past of Newberry Springs—including the tale of the cantankerous Mrs. Orcutt and her historic ranch.

We also unravel the adventure and intrigue of geocaching—an international outdoor activity that has brought visitors from all over the world to explore Newberry Springs. Brian shares how geocaching, including his own cleverly designed gadget caches, is putting this desert town on the map for explorers and tourists alike.

This episode offers a mix of history, personal stories, and outdoor excitement. Whether you love tracking down hidden treasures or simply want to learn more about this unique corner of California, don’t miss today’s journey into geocaching and grassroots preservation!

DISCUSSION

00:00 "Retiring to Newberry Springs"

06:06 Mrs. Orcutt's Unique New Life

09:22 Highway Development Landlock Issues

12:01 "Highway Boosted Her Visitability"

14:22 "Camping Misadventure with a 1978 Dodge Polara."

22:10 "History & Geocaching Chat"

LEARN MORE

To learn more about NSEDA, visit their website at https://www.nseda.net/.

To learn about Newberry Springs, CA, the Route 66 Big Birthday Bash, the Pistachio Festival, and much more, visit the Newberry Springs Chamber of Commerce at https://newberryspringschamber.com/ or on these social sites:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewberrySpringsChamber
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nbsp_chamberofcommerce/

Car & Driver: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15385694/mrs-orcutts-driveway-204-mph-on-a-double-nickel-road-page-1

Geocaching: https://www.geocaching.com/. To get started, create a free geocaching account and download the official Geocaching® app or use a GPS device.

NEXT STEPS

Visit us at https://outdooradventureseries.com to like, comment, and share our episodes.

KEYWORDS

Brian Fisher, Mrs. Orcutt's Homestead, Geocaching, NSEDA, Newberry Springs Chamber of Commerce, Route 66 Centennial, Outdoor Adventure Series, Podcast Interview

#BrianFisher #MrsOrcuttsHomestead #Geocaching #NSEDA #NewberrySpringsChamberofCommerce #Route66Centennial #OutdoorAdventureSeries #PodcastInterview

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello everybody and good morning from Newberry Springs, California. It's a beautiful Saturday morning and I literally am inside of a house uh long time abandoned. Uh it needs a little work. Uh it's a fixer upward, no doubt about that. But inside the house with me, I have a number of good friends that uh I have met uh the past couple days. But uh I have a new friend I'm gonna be chatting with today. His name is Brian Fisher, and he is affectionately known, I don't know if it's an official title, uh, of but he's known as Mr. Geocache. And he is also affiliated with the uh historical group here in Newberry Springs. And we're excited today to uh learn not only about his history here in Newberry Springs, but also uh the work he's doing with the Historical Society, and also I'm gonna learn something new today. I'm because I I've heard the word geocache before, but I really am very uh light in the knowledge side, so I'm gonna learn a little bit about it. But also first, Brian, uh again, welcome to the Outdoor Adventure Series, and I would love to learn a little bit about you and your history here in uh Newberry Springs.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Uh I I came down to Newberry Springs as a result of a base closures in the late 1900 1990s and came down here, I believe, in either 96 or 98. And because of base closure up in Maryland area, uh transferred down here to the Marine Base where I worked for the rest of my career there and uh then retired to Newberry Springs. But when I first came down here, I was looking for a place to live. And uh Realtor gave me a whole bunch of listings, go look. Mm-hmm. And so I did, and I came out here and I was struck by the peace, the quiet, just the general tranquility of the area, the views and everything, and uh found a piece of property that w I liked, a house on it that was adequate and fine, and uh purchased that, and then my wife came down about eighteen months later. So that was how I was introduced to here. Okay. Originally our idea was to live down here until I retired, until she retired as well, and then moved back to Napa, which is where we were from. And um Did you drink wine?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Occasionally. Occasionally, I think I thought that was a rule, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

No, I actually actually uh I I grew up in a in a house of teetotlers, so okay, gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

But uh I was born and raised in and lived in Napa most all my life. And uh so we were gonna move back to Napa, but by the time we got to retirement, we didn't wish to do so.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

So we stayed down here because of the peace, the quiet. I'm on a 20-acre parcel, so I can do basically anything. Anything you want.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

And uh up in Napa, I'd be living in a subdivision, you know, an 80 by 100 foot lot.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Okay. So I I'm curious though, okay. You're on a 20-acre lot, you can do anything you want. Is there something you'd like to share with our listeners about what you get to do on that lot and nobody else gets to know? Um you gotta keep it G-rated, though.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Yeah, I gotta keep it G-rated, but no, I uh well we put a second house on the property. Okay, and our son lives in the original home, okay, you know, with his family, and then we put a second house because he w he came down here and actually went to work at the Marine Base as well. But then uh he wanted a place to live, of course, with his family, and so we were gonna put a s mobile home on the property, and then found out that that's really legally difficult.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Okay. And that's good to know because I'm always looking for my next place to live.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

So well, the problem was you can put a mobile home if you get the permission and it meets current specifications. So if you go out and buy a reasonably priced used mobile home, you have to rewire it, you have to re-plumb it.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

So you don't buy it, it was cheaper to buy a house. Okay. Move a house onto the property. So that's what we did. Now we figured out if we're gonna have a new house and an old house, we're gonna live in the new one.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

There you go. That's a smart move. Smart move.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Uh in addition, uh, I've got a very large 40 by 40 foot uh barn garage. Okay, very good, and a uh standard two-car garage as well on the property. Very nice.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Okay, now in retirement, um tell us how you're staying busy because this is a beautiful area. The there's a lot of history here, a lot of history, and we want more folks to know about it. And I know you're actively involved as we it shared in the intro, but tell us a little bit about how you're keeping active here, uh, not only for yourself and your interest, but also in helping to promote uh Newberry Springs.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Well, I'm a member of the Newberry Springs Economic Development Association or in SEDA. And a few months ago, uh Carla actually brought up having a committee to research and to discover uh to record and preserve the history of Newberry Springs, because unfortunately, there's a lot of history that's been recorded about the Barstow, Yermo, Daggett, uh, and Ludlow, but Newberry Springs basically is on the way to Ledlow. Right, is what they say. But there is a lot of history going back into like the 1840s here in Newberry, and it is just all scattered, it's nothing together. So we formed this committee, and I raised my hand and became the chairman of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

You gotta watch that hand raising.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

It was a pause, and then I had to go home and explain it to the wife what I'd done. But as part of that, this is uh Mrs. Orcott's residence, right, her ranch.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

And who was Mrs. Orcott? Because I was gonna ask that was gonna be my next phase in, is like we are standing in a little bit of history right now.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, well, Mrs. Orcott was a uh widow who uh moved out from, I believe, either Illinois or Indiana, so far as I can determine at this point, and moved down into the Los Angeles area, uh, opened a little business called the uh Littless Lumber Yard, which I think was more of a tax write-off than a business from researching done on it, and uh obtained property down the hill, and she decided that she wanted to live out someplace other than down there after her husband died. So she came up here, she just settled on this piece of property here, which is about 102 acres in three parcels, and she decided that she wanted to live here. She was a kind of a unique person, uh a little cantankerous, very self-minded as far as what she wanted, and that was the way.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

You're being very polite there, as you described.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Well, maybe he's not here to defend herself.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

And uh she uh s settled here, she built this house, she developed the property. This was a certified wildlife reserve out here. Oh wow. And uh which gave her all kinds of advantages, the title and everything else. The lakes helped that she has here on had here on the property. And then in uh the nine well, let's see, she closed escrow on this property in February of nineteen sixty-two.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Okay. And that year rings a bell, but we're not gonna talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

She uh was a widow refuge. Oh, in uh 1964 the interstate was put in here, I-40. Ah now her property stretched from here to Route 66. Oh. In three parcels.

SPEAKER_03 8:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Okay. And this was, I think, medium-sized parcel, and then the rest of the area over here was the largest parcel, I believe. And the other parcel was on the uh stretched from some point on this side of the highway to Route 66. Her access to the property, of course, then was straight out to Route 66, and I believe the road's down that way down to the west of us here partially. I've seen it on maps and aerial things, but I have not actually physically located it. I've looked for it.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

And uh in uh I know somebody in somebody's home, we saw a drone, so we need some drone flyers out here to that'll that'll help you uh find that road, I think.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

I think so, yeah. Wife and I were out looking for it a couple days ago, and and we think we found it.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

But we're we're not sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

So sh so she was impacted by Route 66, and this road we drove up on, as I understand, was an accommodation on the behalf of the uh the government to sorry about that, but here we'll give you a road.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Well, in uh 1964, when the highway was being developed here and everything, because there's notations about some interreaction with the surveyors surveying the interstate and her. And what they did, of course, is when they put the intersection in here, they landlocked it.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Because the road that we came in on memorial did not exist at that point. So she developed a writing campaign, and the only one I've come across so far was a letter to the county, San Bernardino County, about the fact that this property uh that this property was being isolated.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

And they basically told her it's not our problem. The other letter is is that when she got her property taxes, she she didn't like paying taxes.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Yeah, imagine that. But when her property taxes came in on the parcel that the interstate sits on, she was billed for those.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Uh I can imagine that would set somebody off.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, so that that developed a series of letters to and from the assessor's office who said, Oh, yeah, right, yeah, no, and they adjusted her property taxes by excluding that parcel to the uh south of us here.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

So in addition to this this property, and what is unique about this property and how are I now you've got some activity going on here as well right now.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Yes, I do. Two things is that thanks to Mr. Deal, we have a large amount of correspondence from Okay. And Mrs. Paulson, Vicky Paulson, has organized us into six boxes.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

And I'm going through these boxes one letter at a time and taking a lot of time.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

But you're all retired now.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

I well I know.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

You know, retirement I think you get busier upon retirement. I think so.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

I just don't know how I had time to work. Anyway, uh her all her letters, uh, some bills for various organizations, tax returns, uh birthday cards, all kinds of things like this. Not a lot of pictures. I got one picture with two ladies in it, one of them I think is her, but I don't know. Anyway, about her property here. This is what's what she called her ranch. And there are a lot of letters from people who promised to visit her at her ranch.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Come out and visit her. Now, when the highway department, uh when the US government, after much pressure from her, uh created the driveway coming in here, the four miles paved, high paved road, she that was a very boost to her, actually.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Because before that she had a dirt road that ran between here and Route 66.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Rained hard, guess what?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

You're not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

You're not going anywhere. And there's numerous letters about, G, we were gonna come and visit you. Well, don't bother because you can't get here.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Type thing. I mean, I don't know exactly how much she was locked in here. I get the impression that she was from going through all this paperwork and everything. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

So you're really going through a lot of you and your peers in this historical society are uh going through the uh materials and really trying to make sense of what happened and when, and essentially tracing the history on her behalf. And that sounds like I mean, uh it's tedious work, it's exacting work, but it's also fun.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

It's fun. Yeah, I've always had a hiss uh an interest in history, and this is in a way, yeah, it's enjoyable and everything. Okay. And usually when I get it, when I wake up at three, four o'clock in the morning, okay. I spend about an hour or so just going through her paperwork because it's quiet and peaceful, there's nothing going on.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

And you're not uh surfing the internet on Facebook and YouTube videos, gotcha. Yeah, gotcha. So let if we could, let's talk a little bit about your geocaching. You know you are after all, you are Mr. Unless there's something very special you want to uh end with uh uh regarding the the the the woman whose property this was.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Well, we can move on to geocaching. Actually, my geocaching name is Captain Nemo. Captain Nemo. Okay. Okay. And uh how I came about that name is well, I'll tell you what the heck. We used to go down to Pismo Beach every Christmas, Christmas to New Year's, and when you go to Pismo Beach to camp on the beach, you have to cross a river. Right. Now the river sometimes is a trickle and sometimes it's torrent. And at the time I was driving a 1978 Dodge Polar.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Okay, not not an off-road car by any stretch of the imagination. And uh we came up to the gate, we had reservations, and they asked me, Well, you know, what are you here for, basically? And we said, Well, we're here to camp. We have reservations and all that, and she says, and she says, You're not gonna make it. Well, what she didn't know is we had our group, our half of our group was already on the beach, okay, including people with four big four drives. Right. And so I says, Well, I'll give it a try. And she figures, okay, I'm gonna have to rescue some people, and three of us in the car. A friend of us was sitting in the back seat, get to in a minute. Anyway, we got up to the river, and the river was really running.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Okay. And so I think I know where this is going.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Yeah. So we called ahead, got our friend with a four-wheel drive, come back out, hooked us up, and when he pulled us into the river, the whole front end of the car went underwater. Okay. And if you ever remember the movie Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, yes, and they show the submarine, you see the lights underneath the water. Well, that's what it looked like.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Okay. Our friend that was in the back seat was now on the shelf behind us, the back, because she figured we were all gonna drown.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Well, he got us through the river. I've been off-roading with him many times, so I wasn't really sure. But that's where the name came from.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Anyway, geocaching started back in uh May of 2000. Okay. On the second of May, the government turned off what was called selective availability, which meant that the geoca uh the GPS signals from the satellites were increased accurate to your location uh in a multiple multiple more sensitive manner. The next day a gentleman by the name of Dave Omer uh went out and hid a five-gallon bucket with some items in it, right, put it on the on the uh on the internet for people to go out and find. And went that way for a couple of years, and then in 2002, uh a group got together and formed a company, Ground Speed.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

And what they what geocaching is, is that participants, geocachers, right, go out and they hide containers.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Now the containers can be as small as a little pill bottle. They can be as the most common size is like a prescription pill bottle.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Okay. And they can go large. Largest one I found was a railroad car. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Somebody had a railroad car. You had to really want to do that one.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah. And uh they hide these, or they he didn't hide it, obviously. Right. But uh he uh anyway, you you post on the on the on the website geocaching.com the location, the coordinates, latitude and longitude for the uh geocache. Then other people, geocachers, go on the internet, spot that, and then go out and find it.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Okay. Sometimes they're very easy to find, sometimes they're extremely difficult to find.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Here in Newberry Springs, without giving any secrets away, about how many geocaches are in the community?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Well, within a 10 mile radius of my house, which is about four mile, five miles west of here, there are about a thousand.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

A thousand, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Worldwide, there's over three million.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

So it's an international sport that has uh grown exponentially. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

So another good reason to come visit Newberry Springs Well, part of the reason that that uh this is sort of important to the community is tourism. Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Now, why do people come to an area? Sure. Why do why why would you stay out here in the middle of nowhere?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

A lot of different reasons.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

A lot of different reasons. Well, one of the reasons is there's something to do here.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Now in Newberry Springs, uh there are, like I say, within a 10 mile radius is about a thousand geocaches.

unknown 18:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

And one of the f types of geocaches that uh exist now are called gadget caches.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Now, what a gadget cache is, it's relatively easy to find. In fact, if you go down to the barn, you go out behind the barn where they're building the new platform for the celebration, you'll see a little red house sitting on a post right next to where the stage will be. Okay. That's a gadget cache that belongs to me. Okay. And what a gadget cache is, they're relatively easy to find. You go to the location and there it is.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

But you gotta figure out how to open it. Uh and some of them are that one is relatively difficult to open. It's not physically difficult, but you have to follow like three or four steps in a precise order, or it won't open.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Okay, very interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

And gadget caches become very people like them. Yes. Because they're a challenge. And I've had people come to the Newberry area from as far away as Australia, from uh several from Europe, all over the United States and Canada, just because of the gadget caches here in Newberry.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

You know, I have to actually share with you and really thank you because you've literally just now put the outdoor in the outdoor adventure series.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Because again, it gets us outdoors, it helps us visit communities that we may never have thought to visit, or hey, we're coming to the U.S. We've heard of the Baghdad Cafe, the barn, Newberry Springs. Hey, there's some geocaches there. Let's go find them. Let's go find them. I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Well, geocaching has taken me to places that have probably I've been up to 11,000 feet looking for a geocache.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Top of a mountain. I've been underground at least 150 feet in a mine looking for a geocache. I've been to uh we went to New Orleans on one of our trips after we retired. And in the French Quarter, all the hotels are around the French Quarter. Right. Right. Well, there was a geocacher who put a geocache in one of the hotels. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Unbeknownst to the hotel, probably.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

No, actually, he was the vice president in charge of uh of maintenance.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Okay. For the hotel. Gotcha. So that's he had an hint. That's special that's a special thing to do. Is it what's your is there a favorite geocache here for you in Newbury Springs? That gives that really gives you a lot of history, good memories. It kind of brings back something for you that like, oh, this is cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Oh, well. The one here on the property.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Okay. And we're gonna go look for that in a little bit, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yes, if we'd like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Carla's gonna car uh Carla has the art itinerary of what we're gonna do. Oh, okay. I'm sure it's on the side. Well, she's in charge, and that's a good idea. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

The anyway, the uh the gadget caches, I like the gadget caches.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Uh the problem with the gadget caches is first of all, it you can't just go grab a container and put it out there.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Okay. The second problem with the geocache is you don't want to put it someplace where it's likely to get vandalized.

SPEAKER_03 21:41

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Of course. And the third problem is is they're not maintenance free. They're a mechanism that has to work or it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

You gotta put a battery in, you gotta put a little bit of WD forty.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

W forty, you gotta and the one at the barn has been a high maintenance cachier.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Okay. It's because of the intricacy of the I'm gonna have to t have Carla take me back to the barn to go look at that cache and we'll have a picture there of it as well. Oh, okay. I I really love that you were able to to kind of spend some time with us today and chat about not only your role in helping capture and record the history, share the history of Newberry Springs and your interest in geocaching, and really thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

I appreciate it. All right, and I know we're gonna have uh one more interview coming up. I understand uh Mr. Paul Deal's coming back, and uh we're gonna talk a little more history in just a little bit. So thank you uh for spending time. Okay, I and I I want to go out to see that geocache. We're gonna capture a picture. Okay, very good. All right, take care. Thank you.