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Answer to Puzzle #5

12/13/2019

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Picture
Joaquin Miller, 1903.
Public Domain (resized)

A: The cabin, which originally stood next to what's now Meridian Hill Park, built by the 19th-century poet Joaquin Miller (pen name of Cincinnatus Hiner Miller), "the Byron of the Rockies." Something of a showman in the tradition of the 19th Century "Wild" West, a man trading in the genteel East (and England) on frontier adventures real or invented, Cincinnatus took the name Joaquin after a Mexican bandit he once defended in a newspaper. 

"Because of his fondness for Byronic posturings," the Britannica dryly notes, "his autobiographical writings...are usually considered untrustworthy."

Miller lived in the District in the 1880s. President Chester A. Arthur procured the stone for his cabin from the supply used to complete the long-suffering Washington Monument (1848-opened 1886). The poet became something of a local celebrity. Crowds pestered him at his cabin, which at that time was on the edge of the built-up part of town. 

After Miller left Washington in 1886, according to the Rock Creek Conservancy's web site, "The California State Association proposed disassembling the structure and re-erecting it in Rock Creek Park as a tribute to Miller, who had settled outside San Francisco. Despite pushback from park authorities, the DC Commissioners approved the plan—as long as the Association picked up all the costs, ceded all control over the cabin and let the engineer in charge of the park choose the exact location (which had to be 'on Beach drive north of Military road'). And that is where the Joaquin Miller Cabin came to be rebuilt and still resides. Miller composed a poem (below) to be recited at its dedication on June 2, 1912, about eight months before he died."

That poem, judge for yourself, can be found at the bottom of the same page. 

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Puzzle #5

12/5/2019

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Picture
What and where is this cabin in Rock Creek Park? 
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    I'm a freelance writer and editor who lives in Washington, D.C.

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