Milestones

The First Geocache

Also Known As The Great American GPS Stash Hunt

Citation Formats

General Reference

Home, Crafts and Hobbies Atlas. "The First Geocache." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-home.interactiveatlas.org/milestones/the-first-geocache.

APA Style

Home, Crafts and Hobbies Atlas. (n.d.). The First Geocache. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-home.interactiveatlas.org/milestones/the-first-geocache

BibTeX

@misc{home,craftsandhobbiesatlas-the-first-geocache,
  author = {Home, Crafts and Hobbies Atlas},
  title = {The First Geocache},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-home.interactiveatlas.org/milestones/the-first-geocache},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The hobby began as a test of a technology change. One day after the United States turned off Selective Availability, the deliberate degradation of civilian GPS accuracy, computer consultant Dave Ulmer hid a black plastic bucket of small items in the woods near Beavercreek, Oregon and posted its coordinates to an online GPS users' group, daring readers to find it with nothing but a receiver. He called it the Great American GPS Stash Hunt; within three days two different readers had found it, and by the end of the month the pursuit had been renamed geocaching to shed the word stash's unwanted connotations.

Facts

Milestone Year

2000 1

When

May 3, 2000, the day after GPS Selective Availability was switched off (Blue Switch Day), Dave Ulmer hid the first cache and posted its coordinates online. 1

Location

Beavercreek, Oregon 1

Cross-Tradition Connections