A bit of Geocaching History
GPS was originally developed by the US Department of Defense to provide all-weather round the clock navigation capabilities for military ground, sea, and air forces.
Following the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983, President Ronald Regan issued a directive making the system available for free for civilian use. However, the signal for civilian use was intentionally degraded to give an accuracy of no better than 100 meters. This intentional degradation of the signal was called Selective Availability or SA for short. At 20 hundred hours on May 1, 2000 (EST), President Clinton ordered that the SA be turned off for good. The result of this is that all GPS receivers will now work to accuracies as close as 5 meters. An interesting sideline, there was also a short period during the Gulf War in 1990/91 when SA was turned off because there were not enough military GPS receivers and the military had to rely on civilian receivers.
It wasn’t long after that, that a challenge went out. On May 3, 2000, a five-gallon bucket was placed somewhere in the ground by Dave Ulmer, of Beaver Creek, Oregon, containing Delorme Topo USA and 2 CD Roms, a cassette recorder, a "George of the Jungle" VHS tape, a Ross Perot book, 4 $1 bills, a slingshot handle, and a very famous can of beans (or BlackEye Peas)(now the O.C.B. T.B.!) He also included a log book with GPS Stash #1 written on it. The log book also listed the contents of the stash, and a note stating “take something….leave something”. The coordinates were then listed on the Internet and modern-day Geocaching was born. The original stash by Dave Ulmer appears to be listed on Geocaching.com as The Original Stash, GCF. As noted in the cache log on GC.com, geocaching.com is not as old as geocaching, so early caches were not originally recorded on GC,com. There are two caches at or nearby the original Stash. One of them is The Original Stash Tribute Plaque GCGV0P, and the second is the Un-Original Stash GC92, hidden October 22, 2000.
By May 6, 2000 the original stash had been found twice and logged once. The first finder of that first cache was Mike Teague, who took the money and left some cigarettes, a cassette tape and a pen.
Mike Teague (Mike & Jeff) went on to hide 5 stashes of his own. He placed GC4 and GC5 on May 7, 2000, GC8 on May 28, 2000, GC9 on June 11, 2000 and GC2D2 on February 18, 2001. all have since been archived. Strangely, though, he has logged only three finds in all. Stash GC9 has only one log entry, and that by Jeremy, uttering the words of Mike Teague stating that the stash had been muggled, probably by some drunken teens partying in the area.
Mike’s first stash, GC4, was named “Mike’s First”. It is also the first geocache that I can find listed on Geocaching.com. I don’t know what happened to GC1 to GC3. Mike’s first stash was logged as a find by only one cacher, Jeremy (Jeremy Irish), founder of Groundspeak Inc. A second person by the geocaching name of “makaio” had a look for it, but logged it as a DNF. The cache was then archived. Makaio, by the way, was the person who placed the Un-Original stash, GC92, mentioned previously. Jeremy was FTF on stashes GC4, GC5, GC7 and GC8.
Dave Ulmer, profile user name on geocaching.com is “daveulmer”, went on to place five more caches, GC6, GC10, GC13, GC14 and GC15. These were all placed between May 3, 2000 and June 3, 2000. Even though GC10 was placed May 8, 2000, it’s first log entry was dated April 1, 2000. GC14 is called Williams Lake. It is a 5 X 4. If you visit the cache page there is a link to the original log as archived on geocaching.com. GC15 is a 5 X 5 cache called Goat Summit Geocache. It had six finds logged before it was archived. All six caches are now archived.
It is interesting to note some statistics on some of the pioneers of geocaching. For example, according to geocaching.com, Dave Ulmer has only fifteen finds to his record, and six hides. The latest find recorded is GCF04D, Hole in The Mountain, logged by him on April 10, 2007. Mike Teague, User name on GC.com is yngve, according to the geocaching.com logs, has logged only three finds and 5 hides. His last visit to the geocaching web pages was Thursday, July 05, 2007.
Also, as mentioned before, another geocaching pioneer that needs further mention is Jeremy Irish. Jeremy is the President and Co-founder of Groundspeak, Inc., the company that owns and operates Geocaching.com. In checking the profile for user Jeremy it indicates he has over 370 finds and three cache hides. The first cache hide, SAVI Stash, GC5D, was hidden September 24, 2000. It indicates the first to log was Moun10Bike on September 25, 2000. It is interesting to note by the entries in the log for this cache, there is another user profile by the name of iryshe who often appears to administer Jeremy’s caches. If you check the profile for user iryshe it will indicate that user profile is in fact the admin account at Geocaching.com for Jeremy as well as many other cachers. An admin account is an account that handles caches for individuals. It wasn’t until later that caches were taken out of the admin account and given to individuals. I believe that this is the way EarthCaches are still handled.
According to Jeremy’s profile, a second cache was placed by him along with Leonardo and Moun10Bike. This cache was da Vinci’s Cable, GC21F4. It was placed on October 12, 2001. It was archived by Jeremy on July 6, 2002. The third cache placed by him was called King For A Day, GC2A7D, placed November 27, 2001. If you go to the cache page for this one, it becomes a bit confusing because the first log entry is by Jeremy himself where he says he rushes out with King Mike and Jeremy made a makeshift cache for others to find.
That brings me to Moun10Bike (Jon Stanley). It seems he is only one of a few original pioneers of geocaching that have more that single or double digit finds. I believe one of the aforementioned pioneers had over 500 finds. Moun10Bike has, as of the time of this research, over 7500 finds and owns over 100 cache hides. He also boasts of more than 880 Trackables moved or discovered. On his list of trackables owned he shows nearly 1800. Moun10Bike claims to be the first person to place a cache in Idaho. This cache named Camels Prairie Stash, GC25 also claims to be the fortieth cache placed worldwide. It was placed June 17, 2000, and still shows as an active cache. As was the standard of the day, this cache, too, was a 5-gallon bucket dug into the ground. Moun10Bike claims to have placed the first Stash Hopper in this cache. It was originally a lawn ornament. When it was placed it contained a 8 – 10 inch frog called Stash Hopper. He must have thought about it over the Winter and the following May he posted to the cache log that he would be replacing the 8 – 10 Stash Hopper with a smaller 2 inch version. When he got to the stash on May 26, 2001, he had discovered that someone had been there before him on that day and took the bigger Stash Hopper. In any event, he placed the smaller Stash Hopper in the cash along with some more goodies.
Moun10Bike didn’t find his first cache until September 25, 2000. The cache was called SAVI Stash GC5D. It was a FTF for him on that cache. It was a cache by Jeremy, placed September 24, 2000. There was only one other find on that cache before it was archived.
Moun10Bike was one of the first people contacted when Jeremy was looking for help to review cache submissions. He became a reviewer in early 2001 and held that position by the name of Moun10Bike and later as PNWadmin until late 2008, when he stepped down.
Jeremy also accompanied Moun10Bike on his 100th cache find. It was called Light House Point GC126C. This was to be a special cache find for Moun10Bike. He talked to a military caching friend about military challenge coins. The friend talked to Moun10Bike about design and where to get them minted. So Moun10Bike designed and had minted a set of “personalized coins” that he dubbed “geocoins”. He thought that would be the perfect geocaching item – compact, easy to carry, durable. Thus was born the first “geocaoin”. Of the first series of coins he minted, he kept the first coin #001, and placed #002, the first geocoint to be placed into circulation, in Light House Point GC126C on September 30, 2001. It was about this time, or just before that time Jeremy was placing the first Travel Bugs in caches.
It appears that Moun10Bike placed the first “traveler” or Stash Hopper in a cache, asking it to move from “stash” to “stash”. Jeremy then placed the first Travel Bug in a cache, followed by Moun10Bike placing the first “geocoin” in a cache.
By the way, the first cache placed in Canada was Geocache – Canada’s 1st geocache GCBBA. It was placed on June 28, 2000, by ken kane. It is located about 30 minutes from Halifax on a major highway. This cache was originally named Geocache GC41. It was later relisted as GCBBA when caches were taken out of the (GC.Com) site admin account and given to individuals. GCBBA still appears to be active.
The oldest cache in the Kamloops area is Loons Nest, GC6762. It was placed June 20, 2002 by doryman. It was later adopted by Tech Nic.
Cache container is a 355 ml. camo'd Lock & Lock.
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