JFK GeoTrail – A Day in Dallas
This geocache is part of a 14 cache GeoTrail series. To complete the GeoTrail download the Passport here. You will need to take the Passport with you to each cache and be ready to write, punch, or stamp the appropriate markings that are hidden in each cache. Once complete, follow the instructions to receive your commemorative token.
The Municipal Building
On Sunday morning November 24, 1963, just two days after the Kennedy assassination, a crowd of reporters was gathered in the basement of this building as they awaited Oswald’s transfer to the jail. The transfer was supposed to occur around 10am, but Police Chief Curry was still upstairs interviewing Oswald. Meanwhile, Jack Ruby, owner of the Carousel Club just a few blocks down Commerce Street was finishing his morning laundry and then headed to Western Union to transfer $25 to one of his employees in Fort Worth, the transfer occurred and Ruby left the Western Union office at 11:17am. Outside on the street, he saw the crowd gathered just a block away. He entered the basement entrance and mingled with the press unnoticed until just moments later, when he lunged forward with handgun drawn right as Oswald approached. Two photographers famously captured the scene as it unfolded, as Ruby shot Oswald at point blank range in the abdomen. Oswald was placed onto a stretcher and rushed to Parkland Hospital, where he soon died in surgery.
This is the entrance Jack Ruby entered on Commerce Street. The ramp accesses a tunnel that continues through the building to Main Street, which was in plain view to the motorcade 3 days earlier when they turned right onto Main Street from N. Harwood, where the largest group of well-wishers gathered to see the President.
A Pulitzer Prize winning photo that shows the very moment when Oswald recoils from the fatal shot.
The snub-nosed revolver used by Jack Ruby to kill Oswald during his transfer to jail.
Jack Ruby’s days overseeing his nightclub were over. He spent the next two years in jail until he finally died from complications of lung cancer.
This cache is hidden near the entrance that Ruby took to enter the melee on November 24, 1963. Just a few blocks to the west down Commerce Street was the site of Ruby’s Carousel Club. In just a short walk down Commerce Street, using the timeline above, you can follow Jack Ruby’s footsteps on his last day of freedom. The building is no longer there but a much larger structure now sits at the previous spot of his 1312½ Commerce Street 2nd floor nightclub.