Geocaching is now more than 20 years old, although we're still celebrating that anniversary due to the intervention of the coronavirus.
Most are aware that geocaching came about after POTUS Bill Clinton turned off Selective Availability of the GPS system allowing civilians to use GPS to locate themselves and 'things' on earth.
The first thing 'stashed' was hidden on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon. He posted the coordinates of his hidden bucket on the Usenet newsgroup sci.geo.satellite-nav at 45°17.460′N 122°24.800′W. Within three days, the cache had been found, first by Mike Teague.
The GPS-location game was originally called the "GPS Stash Hunt" but later in 2000 was recoined Geocaching.
But geocaching had much earlier beginnings and shares many aspects with letterboxing, benchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking...
It was originally similar to the game letterboxing which originated in 1854 on Dartmoor, England, which uses clues and references to landmarks to find letterboxes containing mail to send. Geocaching's Letterbox-hybrid is a tribute to the original, combining the use of GPS and a stamp to record the visit. This container is an ‘official’ letterbox, so you can record it too if you wish.
By 1995 there was an existing location-based game in the US called benchmarking which involved finding survey markers or geodetic control points. In England the game involves searching for trig points and is also known as trigpointing, also an activity popular in NZ. Finding and logging US and Canadian benchmarks is part of geocaching, but not in NZ. This location is NZ Geodetic Survey Mark A67U under a 2m metal beacon.
Geocaching prior to 2003 included no-container Virtual and Locationless caches, of which a few remain. In August 2005 Groundspeak released a separate game called waymarking based on those two retired cache types. Waymarking uses GPS coordinates to mark, visit, and share locations around the world. Waymarking highlights interesting places like historical buildings, statues, or natural locations. There's a Waymark here for you to log too if you wish. (You can log in with your geocaching profile).
This geocache is a regular size and may just hold some treasue too, so could be part of a treasure hunt.
Have fun!
“As the geocache owner, I assure that the above links are safe to access. They are reputable government, wikipedia and geocaching related websites that contribute to geocaching in positive ways. As far as I'm aware, the links have not been checked by Geocaching HQ or by the reviewer."