What
Come join us as we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of
Geocaching here in Wyoming Mi.
When
May 2nd, 2010 from 3:00 pm - 7:00 pm.
Where
We we be meeting in the (indoor) Lodge at Pinery Park on DeHoop
between 28th and Burton Streets in Wyoming.
Who
Everyone and anyone are welcome at the event.
What Do I
Bring?
Potluck by Last Name:
A-I - Bring a Main Dish
J-Q - Bring a Dessert
R-Z - Bring a Salad or Side Dish
Everyone: Bring a drink (soda, ice tea, lemonade, etc). We run out
of food quickly - please consider bringing something larger or
extra if you are able.
Also, Please bring as many, of any kind of Cans
of Beans as you can. These will be displayed in the
group photo and then be donated to food
bank to feed those in need.
Perhaps we'll take the biggest can of beans, bury it, and then find
it 10 years from the event date. 
History of
Geocaching
(Taken from: A
History of Geocaching.)
GPS, or Global Positioning System, was developed by the US
Department of Defense. This satellite navigation system was
intended for military use and therefore the signals were scrambled,
limiting accuracy for civilian use to about 100 meters. On May 1,
2000, President Clinton announced that this scrambling, known as
Selective Availability (SA), would be turned off. Civilians were
then able to enjoy accuracy on the order of 10 meters.
On May 3, 2000, Dave Ulmer proposed a way to celebrate the demise
of SA. He hid a bucket of trinkets in the woods outside Portland,
Oregon and announced its location in a posting made to the USENET
newsgroup sci.geo.satellite-nav. This announcement is remarkable
for laying out the essence of the hobby that is still in place
today. It's all there. The container. The trinkets. The log book.
The rule of take something, leave something, sign the logbook. Dave
Ulmer invented geocaching in one fell swoop in that newsgroup
posting.
Within a day, the original stash had been found. Within days, more
stashes had been hidden in California, Kansas, and Illinois. Within
a month, a stash had been hidden as far away as Australia. The
hobby was fast on its way to being a worldwide phenomenon.
On May 8, Mike Teague announced a Web site for collecting the
locations of caches. The original Web page is gone, but thanks to
the Wayback Machine, a copy of the GPS Stash Hunt Homepage still
exists.
On May 15, James Coburn set up a mailing list on eGroups (now
Yahoo! Groups) for discussion of geocaching. The list is still in
existence. Its archives contain the best record of the early days
of the hobby.
On May 30, a new name was coined for the hobby. Matt Stum suggested
"geocaching" to avoid the negative connotations of the word
"stash".
So, within a month, the hobby had in place the rules, its first
hides and finds, a mailing list and a home page. And the number of
caches was growing fast.
On September 2, 2000, Jeremy Irish emailed the gpsstash mailing
list that he had registered the domain name geocaching.com and had
setup his own Web site. He copied the caches from Mike Teague's
database into his own. On September 6, Mike Teague announced that
Jeremy Irish was taking over cache listings
Today the site of the first "stash" is marked by a plaque
("Original Stash Tribute Plaque" at GCGV0P). Other caches of
interest include:
The oldest active Geocache east of the Mississippi: "The Spot"
(GC39) in Western NY. The Spot was hidden May 26th, 2000.
The oldest continuously active cache, "Mingo" (GC30), in Kansas. It
was placed less than two weeks after Dave Ulmer's, on May
11th.
Also interesting: (GC12) placed May 12th in Oregon, and Beverly
(GC28), placed May 13th in Illinois.
The rest as they say is
history....
Add this event to your watchlist for any
updated information.