The Eugene, Cascades & Coast GeoTour

2012-2015 Multi-Faceted Countywide Promotion

In 2012, Travel Lane County partnered with Groundspeak/Geocaching.com to launch Oregon's first official geocaching tour — joining only ten official GeoTours worldwide. The GeoTour featured four "editions", or trail segments, highlighting the McKenzie River, Florence, Oakridge/Westsfir and the Territorial Highway.

What is Geocaching?

Before Pokemon Go. there was geocaching! In 2000, the U.S. government removed barriers to global positioning system signals, making it possible for civilians to track location precisely. Within 24 hours, the first GPS stash, now called a geocache, was hidden in Beavercreek, Oregon by Dave Ulmer. He posted the cache's coordinates online with the instructions to "Get some stuff, Leave some stuff!!" and within three days, several people tracked it down, did just that, and shared their experience online. The game began.

A decade later "geocaching" had a devoted following of enthusiastic geocachers. This new hobby was accessible and appealing across generations and abilities. All that was required was a GPS device or an app downloaded on your phone. The game could be played inside or outside in public spaces and it was a boon to the tourism industry as geocachers sought out new clusters of caches across the country.