Selective Availability of 24 US military satellites launched by the US Government ended a few minutes past midnight on May 2, 2000.....Therefore civilian GPS receivers became accurate to within 16' to 49' instead of 300'.....This opened up the whole world to the fun game of Geocaching......And on May 3, 2000 Dave Ulmer placed the first documented GPS-located cache container, "A BLACK BUCKET", in the woods near Beavercreek, Oregon, near Portland.....The cache had the usual cache contents, a logbook, pencil, and several trade items.....This event happened before the days of Groundspeak Inc as we know it today.....Ulmer promoted his first cache hide as the "GREAT AMERICAN GPS STASH HUNT"....He shared the waypoint of his "stash" with the online community on sci.geo.satellite-nav USENET.......This first geocache was found twice within days....And logged by Mike Teague of Vancouver, Washington....The Original Cache is gone, but a Geocache and plaque called "The Original Stash Tribute Plaque" are at the site (N 45 17.460....W122 24.800)....."CACHING LORE HAS IT"....that if you place your GPS on the Original Stash Tribute Plaque, you will find all Geocaches you search for thereafter....
Throughout the next week, others became excited about hiding & finding "stashes" so they began hiding their own caches and posting coordinates....."THE GREAT AMERICAN GPS STASH HUNT" WAS SPREADING QUICKLY.....On May 8, 2000, Mike Teague announced the first website to list geocaches and their coordinates.....By the end of May many were ready to change the name of their new sport......Matt Stum was the first to use the term Geocaching on the GPS STASH HUNT mailing list ....GEO..(for earth or geography)...And CACHING..(for a hiding place) or (memory cache such as computer storage).....The combination of EARTH, HIDING, and TECHNOLOGY made Geocaching an excellent term for the new sport.....In July, Jeremy Irish, a web developer for a Seattle Company, found Mike Teague's web site.....Jeremy bought a GPS and went on his first treasure hunt.....He was so thrilled at finding his first cache that he decided to start a hobby site for Caching.....Then on September 2, 2000, Jeremy Irish announced that he had registered the domain name Geocaching.com and had set up his own Web site....He applied his professional web skills to create tools to improve the cache-hunting experience.....With Mike Teague's help, the new site was completed and announced to the STASH-HUNTING COMMUNITY.......Jeremy copied the caches from Mike Teague's database into his own.....And on September 7, 2000, Mike Teague announced that Jeremy Irish was taking over cache listings....At the time the geocaching.com site was launched there were 75 known caches in the world.....
Since there were so few caches in the world, many discovered there were no caches hidden nearby them....They wondered whether anyone would come looking for a cache if they hid one in their area.....Of course the growing community of Cachers said "IF YOU HIDE IT, THEY WILL COME"......And as we all know...THEY SURE DID.!.!.!
Irish soon realized that the Geocaching community was growing so fast that soon he would not be able to manage the growth of all the new accounts on his home DSL line.....So in late 2000, he partnered with coworkers Elias Alvord & Bryan Roth to start a new company called Groundspeak Inc. (Originally called "Grounded Inc.").....They made enough money from selling 144 Geocaching T-shirts to move Groundspeak Inc to downtown Seattle.....After working at Groundspeak Inc only parttime for several years, Jeremy & Elias raised enough money through Premium Memberships to make Groundspeak a full time job.....In late 2005, Bryan Roth finally became a full time employee at the company....Jeremy Irish, Elias Alvord & Bryan Roth continue to own and operate Groundspeak Inc today.....they are supported by a small team of Groundspeak Lackeys and over 100 geocaching volunteers worldwide.
The largest site is Geocaching.com, owned by Groundspeak Inc, with a worldwide membership.....The website claims millions of caches and members in over 200 countries.....Hides and events are reviewed by volunteer, regional cache reviewers before publication.....Free membership allows users access to coordinates, descriptions, and logs for some caches.....For a fee, Premium Membership users are allowed additional search tools, the ability to download large amounts of cache information onto their Gps at once, instant E-mail notifications about new caches and access to premium-member-only caches....
As of March 8, 2010 the number of active caches hidden worldwide reached 1,000,000.....One million caches hidden in just 10 years......Today that number exceeds over 2.5 million active geocaches with over 6 million CACHE SEEKERS worldwide.....CACHE ON.!.!.!.....SEE YOU ON THE TRAIL.!.!.!