Finding Old Caches

As geocaching.com approaches it's 10th anniversary, it seems fitting that I've gained a renewed interest in finding old caches. By old, I mean caches that were the first treasures hidden in their respective cities/counties/regions/states/countries.

As you probably know, the very first cache ever hidden was done so by Dave Ulmer near Portland, Oregon on May 3, 2000. Of course, this happened before geocaching.com existed, although a cache listing was eventually created for it after the fact. That original cache is long gone, but there is a commemorative cache placed in its honor called, Original Stash Tribute Plaque.

There are also a number of great bookmark lists of old caches available. For example, this one lists the first 100 caches ever hidden.

A few weeks ago, a caching buddy of mine and I went after the oldest cache in our home county of Contra Costa, in California. The cache, named "Survival Cache", was hidden on 12/29/2000 by Mark and James in a remote open space area in eastern Contra Costa County. What was nice about this cache, is that the original log is still in the cache container, so you can see who the very first finders were.

You think this would have satisfied our need to find old caches, but instead, it exacerbated it. So just the other day, we headed out to find the oldest cache in the San Francisco Bay Area, "Firestone", hidden on 10/02/2000. This one was hidden in beautiful Mt. Tamalpais State Park in Marin County, overlooking Stinson Beach and the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, I know, life is rough. A little celebration was in order after finding this oldie but goodie:

So what's next? Well, there's always the oldest cache in Northern California, and of course, the oldest cache in the State of California...

Cache On!