Geocaching: The High-Tech Scavenger Hunt

When the U.S. government turned off GPS Selective Availability (SA) in May 2000, it was like magic. Suddenly civilian GPS receivers that were formeraccurate to about 300 feet were accurate to 30 feet. This level of accuracy offered some creative possibilities. Three days after SA was turned off, the following message appeared in the

sci.geo.satellite-nav USENET newsgroup:

From: Dave (news2yousNOneSPAM@hotmail.com.invalid)

Subject: GPS Stash Hunt... Stash #1 is there!

Newsgroups: sci.geo.satellite-nav

Date: 2000/05/03

Well, I did it, created the first stash hunt stash and here are the coordinates:

N 45 17-460

W122 24.800

Lots of goodies for the finders. Look for a black plastic bucket buried most of the way in the ground. Take some stuff, leave some stuff! Record it all in the log book. Have Fun!

Stash contains: DeLorme Topo USA software, videos, books, food, money, and a slingshot!

Earlier that day, in the same newsgroup, Dave Ulmer had proposed a worldwide stash hunt, where people would post GPS waypoints on the Internet to lead searchers to hidden goodies. While Ulmer envisioned thousands of stashes tucked in places all over the world, he had no idea how popular his idea would become.

Starting with a humble little bucket full of goodies in Oregon, Ulmer’s idea took off like wildfire. Within weeks, caches were hidden in Washington, Kansas, California, New Zealand, Australia, and Chile. A newsgroup and Web site that hosted the coordinates of the stashes soon popped up as the word started to get around.

By the end of May, in a Yahoo! Group devoted to the new sport, member Matt Stum suggested that the sport be called geocaching in order to avoid some of the negative connotations associated with drugs and word stash. (A cache is a hidden place where goods or valuables are concealed.) Geocaching had a nice ring to it, and it didn’t sound like a bad Cheech and Chong movie. Today, geocaching has grown popular, and the rules are still pretty much the same: Take some stuff, leave some stuff, record it in the logbook, and have fun! Relatively cheap and accurate GPS receivers and widespread Internet access have helped the sport flourish. As of November 2003, the www.geocaching.com site (currently the largest geocaching site on the Net) had over 72,500 active caches in 188 countries listed in its database. That’s a lot of caches out there to find!