When the GPS signal degradation called Select Availabilty (SA) was removed by the Clinton Administration May 1st, 2000, it opened up the possibility of games like this one.
On May 3rd, a container of goodies was hidden by a gentleman outside of Portland, Oregon - in celebration of the removing of Selective Availability. By May 6th the cache was visited twice, and logged in the logbook once.
Mike Teague was the first to find the container, and built the first web site to document these containers and their locations that were posted to the sci.geo.satellite-nav newsgroup.
In July of 2000, Jeremy Irish found Mike Teague's web site and found his first cache outside of Seattle, Washington. Recognizing the potential of the game (but never expected the growth), Jeremy approached Mike Teague with a new site design, used the name Geocaching, and developed a new web site adding virtual logs, maps, and a way to make it easier to maintain caches as the sport grows. The site was alive for a while, but the official torch was passed to Jeremy on September 6.
Since the launch of the web site, the Geocaching sport has grown to caches in all 50 states and over 200 countries. There are now many variations of the game, including virtual caches, offset caches, puzzle caches, multi-stage caches. New ideas and new great games crop up every day.
From it's inception, Geocaching.com has been developed and maintained by Jeremy, with the assistance of Geocachers around the world. Many thanks to the Geocaching community for making the game it is today. The official web site for Geocaching is Geocaching.com.
My Cache Stats as of 6/13/2007 (Get your own CacheStats at www.logicweave.com)
| Cache Finds | |||
| Total Found: | 857 (# found/attended logs) | Find Rate: | 0.401 per day (2.8 per week, 146 per year) |
| Caches: | 854 (# unique caches visited) | Avg. difficulty / terrain: | 1.60 / 1.33 |
| # Archived: | 369 (43%) | FTFs: | (unknown) |
| Avg. in 1 day: | 3.4 | Oldest Cache: | Tour of Stone Mountain (GC1E placed 6/11/2000) |
| Most in 1 day: | 17 | Most in 1 month: | 69 |
| My Goal: | 900 by 12/31/2007 | ||
| Days Cached | |||
| Total days cached: | 249 (every 8.6 days or 11.6%) | Most consecutive days with a find: | 16 |
| Most in 1 month: | 16 | Most consecutive days without a find: | 179 |
| History | |||
| Year | Total Found | Rate | Days Cached / Frequency |
| 2001 | 63 | 0.420 | 32 / every 4.7 days |
| 2002 | 146 | 0.400 | 52 / every 7.0 days |
| 2003 | 155 | 0.425 | 45 / every 8.1 days |
| 2004 | 81 | 0.222 | 17 / every 21.5 days |
| 2005 | 157 | 0.430 | 29 / every 12.6 days |
| 2006 | 115 | 0.315 | 36 / every 10.1 days |
| 2007 | 140 | 0.848 | 38 / every 4.3 days |
| Milestones | |||
| Number | Date | Cache | # Days between |
| #1 | 8/4/2001 | Tour of Stone Mountain | |
| #100 | 4/22/2002 | Arizona's Liberty Bell | 261 |
| #200 | 11/25/2002 | Fastlane | 217 |
| #300 | 6/21/2003 | Doggy Biscut #2 | 207 |
| #400 | 8/16/2004 | Hidden Palm | 422 |
| #500 | 7/6/2005 | Daily Spectator | 324 |
| #600 | 12/19/2005 | Rx for Fun | 166 |
| #700 | 10/25/2006 | Agritopia | 309 |
| #800 | 5/29/2007 | beTWIN the KNOLLS | 216 |
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| Locations | |
| US States (24): | GA, MO, IA, NE, CO, WY, AZ, NV, WA, OR, CA, UT, ID, MT, WI, IN, SD, NM, TX, OK, KS, AR, LA, MS |
| Countries (1): | United States |
