It’s something that’s been in our Idea Bank for a few years now – geocaching. According to the official Geocaching website, “Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online.”
Doesn’t that sound intriguing? We thought so, too. Wouldn’t it be fun to have geocaches based on local history? Umm, yeah. But none of the staff at the Weyerhaeuser museum own GPS units, so we never made progress on placing history geocaches within Morrison County.
That doesn’t mean geocaching doesn’t take place in the county. Geocachers have been hiding and locating caches in the county for years. According to the Geocaching website, there are 204 active geocaches within range of the Little Falls zip code. We’re excited to announce that now there is a history-related series of geocaches in the area and the Weyerhaeuser Museum site is part of the series. Woot!
Melissa Peterson, who works at the Lindbergh House next door to us, is an avid geocacher. She has created a series of geocaches related to the history of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Little Falls. Because the Morrison County Historical Society was founded in part by the WPA oral history project in the 1930s, Melissa asked if we would like to be included. You betcha!
Melissa has set up the WPA geocaches as mystery geocaches, wherein you have to answer questions provided at each geocache site in the series, which will eventually lead you to a final mystery geocache.
If you’re a geocacher, the Weyerhaeuser Museum’s geocache code is GC2KOJX.
For those of you who are not geocachers, head to the Geocaching website to read up on the process and needed equipment. You can enter the geocache code number in the appropriate spot on the Geocaching home page and you’ll be taken to a page that gives you numbers for all the geocaches in the WPA series.
Have fun geocaching!
Thanks, Melissa, for including the Weyerhaeuser Museum as a site!
– Mary Warner