OPENCACHING NORTH AMERICA

A coworker of mine was just telling about "caching" he did in the late 70's / early 80's.

Unlike Letterboxing, this did use coordinates, which you had to (of course) plot them out. And since we didn't have the Internet, there was a book that provided the overall "how to" and you'd subscribe to a magazine for updated listings. He said it was really big (relatively) in southern Arizona, but when he moved to Northern Arizona, it wasn't as active.

He could not think of what it was called, but said he might have the book or some of the magazines and would check.

It wasn't just orienteering, since it did involve swag and sounds a LOT like the early geocaching.

Has anyone heard of this?

I've never heard of it, but it sounds like good old fashioned treasure hunting to me!

With a little digging, I believe it was called waystashing. Could be wrong though as I can't really find any information on the term...

He didn't mention digging, but I'll ask him. He did mention that the point was for them to be found and they were often marked with some sort of natural material, once you got close. He also said that many people didn't seem to be very good at calculating the coords, and he'd often have to rely on spotting those markings from a ways off.

By digging, I didn't mean for the hobby. I meant that I dug around on the net

glorkar wrote:By digging, I didn't mean for the hobby. I meant that I dug around on the net

Ahhhhhh.......

glorkar wrote:With a little digging, I believe it was called waystashing. Could be wrong though as I can't really find any information on the term...

Well, you can find information on the term, but it all seems to be coming from same guy on various Geocaching forums. Not that I'm saying he's making it up or anything.

Only thing I ever heard of that claims to pre-date Geocaching or Letterboxing (and Letterboxing in North America was only started in 1998) is the Valley Quest program in New England. And it's basically Letterboxing. Mentioned in this article at http://www.letterboxing.info/articles/00000019.php and on that page there is a link to the Valley Quest website.

If DG's friend can come up with the book or some magazines, this would be an amazing discovery!

It may be some sort of activity a local Orienteering club did too