[Az-Geocaching] It's not as bad as we have been told

[Jim Scotti]

Hey Brian,
    Thanks for forwarding the info.  Two questions, how much of the state
trust land does he speak for?  Would there be a similar contact we should
make down here in Tucson?  Second, I wonder what he would think of a virtual
cache at well known archeology or historical sites.  I suppose there aren't
many of those on state trust land since they would probably be under the
National Park service (or maybe should be...).  Places like ghost towns or
whatever.  There's one cache down here which is planted in an old rock wall
(from the early 1900s) and near the remains of an old dam and there are
several petroglyph sites including a prominant one on a rock in the canyon
leading up to the dam.  It's not on park land and it's a pretty popular
hiking trail, so that probably doesn't fit the bill either, but there may be
other areas like that that do....

Jim.

On 20 Aug 2002, Brian Cluff wrote:

> I just got off the from with a guy named Brad that is affiliated with
> the State trust land managment.  He is currently in possession of the
> "Sign from the past III" cache that was taken.
> The conversation that we had was very positive and he really likes the
> idea of geocaching and actually wants to promote it, to the point that
> he wished that he could donate money to geocaching.
> The only thing that he asks is that everyone gets a permit before
> entering the last (which we should already know) that they we don't put
> caches on archeology sites.  If caches are put on any archeolory site
> they will be confiscated and the owner will have a month to pick it up.
> He personally isn't pointing a finger at geocaching for any damage to
> the above site, since he doesn't know for sure that we did or would do
> any damage to any site.... (very cool!)
> For caches that might be put on an archeology site that we don't even
> know that it's an archeology site they will check things out and if it's
> just near a site and we aren't causeing any damage they will probably
> just leave it there, since it could be better to keep the site a secret
> than to let us know it exists by taking the cache.
> All in all, it sounds like the news paper blew things waaaaaay out of
> proportion and gave us a bad name in doing so.
> 
> Anyway, I just wanted to let people know of the situation in reality. 
> Plus he asked me to pass on their rules that they would like us to
> observe... so pretty much what it amounts to is caches as usual minus a
> couple of caches that point out some history, but all in all good news.
> 
> Brian Cluff
> Team Snaptek
> 
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Jim Scotti                              
Lunar & Planetary Laboratory         jscotti@pirl.lpl.arizona.edu 
University of Arizona                
Tucson, AZ 85721 USA                 http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/