08/02/2025
Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s Harborquest! A special thank you goes out to our talented ClueMasters and the additional experts they recruited for this year’s quest. Over the past few years we have strived to deliver a Harborquest experience that is unique, inventive, inclusive and more expansive, providing more in-depth clues, deeper historical research and most recently, multiple “medallions” to provide the opportunity for many more winners. We can’t wait to begin preparations for next year’s quest!
For those who may be still scratching their head a bit over this year’s quest, we provide the following:
HARBORQUEST: PAST MEDALLIONS FOUND! CLUES EXPLAINED!
A cache of Harborfest-related archives was recently unearthed at an off-site storage location of the Oswego Historical Society. While the majority of documents and festival paraphernalia were delivered to the Oswego Public Library for safekeeping, a box labeled "Unsolved HarborQuests" was purchased by JP Jewelers for an undisclosed sum.
"I frankly was shocked at the number of medallions still in the wild," said Jamie Pauldine, owner of JP Jewelers and 2025's Official HarborQuest Sponsor. Pauldine recruited last year's co-ClueMasters Nicholas Gentile and Keren Greene to sort through the documents and see if any of the prizes were still in play. This daunting task required the addition of an expert letterboxer, seven-year-old Nicky Greene, and another researcher, Sarah Galvin.
"The curation of historic clues presented a wide array of unique challenges," said Nicholas Gentile. "Beyond the months-long pursuit to see if these missing medallions remained in their original locations, countless hours of research were required to decide what documentation we would present to assist the public in finally discovering these long-forgotten relics. We thought it would be helpful to provide historical context to connect today's Questers with those of yesteryear. HarborQuest has never been merely about a series of clues to be solved; it is a record of a time and a place, and the peoples who inhabit."
What follows are the explanations of how these historic documents all connect, in the words of this year's HarborQuest Clue Curators:
MONDAY
Our first lost medallion has been unclaimed since 1945, hidden for eighty years. To put that into perspective, as this HarborQuest occurred, soldiers were returning home from World War II. In the cache of HarborQuest documents, we came across a microfiche of a newspaper article under a cardboard flap on the bottom of the box. The article addressed complaints about a certain rhyming clue (poems have been a long-standing medium in HarborQuest clue history). The controversial couplet: “Treasure awaits/those who bring ice skates.” We decided to present this along with a journal entry from a young dentist regarding a few lines from one of the clue poems regarding a sapling, as well as his questions as to whether this indicates the material of the medallion, which was discovered to be carved wood. But the most impressive find was a wax cylinder recording, which we were only able to access thanks to Oswego Historical Audio Archives, a small group of volunteers dedicated to preserving antique local media. The recording painted a scene at Oak Hill Restaurant, where a party of medallion hunters stopped to quench their thirst after climbing Albany Street hill; it would appear that they never finished their search. The wooden medallion was ultimately found in a tree (which we assume was the aforementioned sapling) in Peglow Park, home to both a baseball field where teams referenced in the audio recording played, as well as a popular ice skating rink.
TUESDAY
The Tuesday medallion has been lost since 1906, one hundred and nineteen years. This one proved tricky for a variety of reasons, most notably because it had been moved from its original location and hidden elsewhere by a small child. In the 1900s, clues were cleverly disguised as false articles regarding local matters (the average reader would have been aware of this). In the SOCIAL & PERSONAL column, this was made overt by an article entitled "QUESTING PARTY" which listed the names of those who spent an afternoon searching for the medallion. The names of the guests were combinations of one-block streets in Oswego. In another clue, an unsent letter from a Mrs. Steele to her sister in San Francisco details the account of how her children found the medallion, but after a fight, her youngest hid it "someplace close to her heart." Also within the same envelope was a photograph of a small girl, Mary Steele. By great fortune, Oswego Historical Audio Archives came across a wax cylinder near the end of the week, which we immediately released to the public. It was a conversation between Mary and who is believed to be the editor of the newspaper at that time, in which Mary reveals that the new hiding place is her namesake. An article on this whole affair was published in the Oswego Palladium (before the paper merged with the Oswego Times), which revealed the children originally found the medallion on N. Division, another one-block street. To avoid confusion, we released an excerpt from the interview with Mary's brother, George, who detailed watching the Starchmakers and recalled seeing Mary playing with his magnet collection across the street. This is when the medallion went from found to lost again. Mary had fastened the medallion to the bottom of a street sign with a magnet. That street sign was across from Richardson Park (home of the Oswego Starchmakers), and her namesake: Mary Street. A fun fact that we learned from the Department of Public Works - they were aware of this secret for decades, and whenever they needed to replace or perform maintenance on the sign, they would put the medallion back exactly where Mary had hidden it.
WEDNESDAY
The 1969 medallion was hidden shortly after the moon landing, fifty-six years ago. We printed what we could find of a surviving clue from that year, however, the bottom half was sadly lost to water damage. It detailed a "trail" one would have to follow, including the names of local businesses along West First Street. Two accounts of interest were also in the cache. The first being a journal entry from a young hippie complaining about the commercialization of HarborQuest. In the parlance of his time, he referred to everyone as "fake" and "plastic." The second being a quote from the OVERHEARD IN OSWEGO section of the paper about how this generation is lazy, and "hanging by a thread." This not only paints a picture of the generational divide at the time, but both parties unwittingly stumbled upon truths regarding the medallion! It was, in fact, plastic, and "hanging by a thread" from a railing along the river. For years it had been, to quote the hippie's journal, "blowing in the wind" at a common fishing spot - possibly where the old curmudgeonly fisherman had been casting a line!
THURSDAY
One of the oldest known medallions in HarborQuest history was also among the lost. The 1814 medallion, missing for two-hundred and eleven years, was hidden at a time when the British were attacking Oswego, and had reduced Fort Ontario to rubble. Sealed within the cache, we came across an encoded map drawn by a captured British spy, along with notes on his interrogation from an officer of the 3rd Artillery Regiment. Phrases were written along the axes of the map, and when asked for an explanation as to their meaning, the spy grinned and seemingly requested a bribe. This bribe, however, was a cipher, as the words "thy" and "five shillings" were British versions of two words along each axis - "your" and "crown." The intersection of these words on the grid would bring you to what is now the southeastern section of Breitbeck Park, overlooking the marina. The medallion was found in a crevice (or was it "crevasse?" the spy wondered) in a formation of large rocks behind the Oswego Music Hall. Another uncanny historical coincidence: in the Oswego Gazette article, the army nurse who was quoted shares the same last name as the Oswego Music Hall's current president!
We would like to thank Todd MacLean at Oswego County Monuments for retaining the original blueprints to the granite medallion (originally crafted by JP Wholesale Masonry, as metal was in short supply during wartime).
"Kudos are due to all HarborQuesters, past and present, for their perseverance in the search for these medallions. And to add yet another layer of intrigue: there's still more out there!" claims Pauldine. "We did not locate every historic medallion mentioned in the cache. Some are likely gone forever due to factors such as construction, wildlife, and, of course, Oswego weather. However, you should never stop looking. You might walk by one every day without realizing. You might even see it hidden in plain sight and be none the wiser. In fact, you might be close to one right now. Closer than you even think."
PHOTO: 2025's Clue Curators reassembled old clues from unsolved HarborQuests to create a second-chance at finding long-lost medallions. From left to right: Nicholas Greene, Sarah Galvin, Nicholas Gentile, Keren Greene.
