A Coalition of Geocachers

A kind of coalition that I am a member of is the "Geocaching Hampton Roads" group.

On May 1, 2000, Present Clinton announced that the scrambling of GPS signals would be turned off. When this happened, it allowed civilians to have accurate GPS Data.  On May 3, 2000, a man named Dave Ulmer hid a bucket of trinkets in the woods and announced it's location as a set of GPS coordinates via a newsgroup.  This was the first instance of the hobby called "Geocaching".

Geocaching became more and more popular as more and more people were able to afford GPS receivers. People would hide ammo cans in the woods and publish the coordinates on the new website geocaching.com.  My own family became involved in Geocaching in 2002 in Newport News Virginia.  My kids were young enough to enjoy it as a treasure hunt, and my husband and I liked getting outside and exploring new parks and trails.

                                         My sons finding their very first Geocache in 2002

In early 2003, I was seeking a way to get together with other people who shared the hobby.  So I created a group called "Geocaching Hampton Roads", and set about publicizing and trying to find others who would be interested in this coalition.  I started out by using the geocaching.com website to find people who had recently found caches in my area and then I sent them out a note about the group being formed.  The first week had only 13 members, but the group has since grown to over 700 members. 

While I originally created the group for the social aspect, one of the most important benefits of having this coalition of local geocachers came in the form of negotiating with the local parks.  As geocaching became more popular, some of the local parks had issues with the hobby.  Some did not understand the hobby and thought that it would be a destructive influence to the natural settings.

Because we had a large group, we were able to meet with different parks officials and explain the hobby and assure park officials that the geocachers in the area were generally respectful of the parks. We also organized "Cache-in, Trash-out" days where we would all meet and clean up a park or a trail. The more park managers heard about and saw the good things our group would do, they more willing they were to allow geocaches to be placed in the parks.  To this day, the group has a great relationship with the local parks.   The parks even call upon group members to run geocaching seminars for park visitors and this helps bring even more visitors to the parks. Every year, the group holds a large geocaching picnic at one of the parks.  The last one had more than 500 people, which is good for the economy of the region and for the parks.  I feel this coalition of geocachers has been very successful, and has a good ethical reputation.  The only downside of the coalition that I can see is that on occasion, some people in the group have wanted to formalize the group more, with written bylaws, rules and officers.  So far it has not become a structured group, but I think that in the future, it may. 

                          Geocaching Hampton Roads Group at the annual picnic in 2014