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Cache of the Week
JohnGGeo introduces us to a special geocache in his weekly column.
In this weekly column I will highlight one special geocache. I’m going to start off with the world’s first, now known as the ORIGINAL STASH TRIBUTE PLAQUE.
On May 3, 2000, a five-gallon bucket was placed by Dave Ulmer, 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 what would become a very famous can of beans (which is now the O.C.B. T.B.!) The coordinates were then listed on the Internet and modern-day Geocaching was born.
Mike Teague was the first to find it and made the first trade; he took a few dollar bills and left some cigarettes, a tape and a pen.
That first geocache was later destroyed by a lawn mower.
From this inauspicious beginning grew the game of geocaching. As the game spread virally around the world the importance of this first cache became recognized, and on 09/07/2003 that location was memorialized with a permanent brass plaque which states “ORIGINAL STASH, First Geocache placed here May 3, 2000 N 45° 17.460 W 122° 24.800”. Near the plaque is a cache for Travel Bugs, geocoins and a logbook.
The land is now owned by Port Blakely Tree Farms, so if you go after it, please show some courtesy. The memorial cache is the most visited traditional cache in the world, with over 2000 finds, 2 DNFs, 431 notes and a few archiving and maintenance logs.
I wonder if Dave Ulmer ever thought that this bucket of trinkets that he put out in the woods and then posted directions to online would launch such a huge game? This cache and the public’s response to it launched the game of geocaching and several websites dedicated to listing them, most notably geocaching.com, a geocache listing site which currently lists 641,175 geocaches worldwide and is still growing.
So hats off to Mr. Ulmer, and may geocaching continue to prosper. I hope if you ever go out to Portland, Oregon that you will take the time to visit this great geocache treasure.
Happy Geocaching!
Until next week,
JohnGGeo
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