Benchmarks on Military Bases

[wardawg2]

I am a Marine Stationed on Camp Pendleton, and was just introduced to the sport of geocaching. I am loving it. For some reason, I get more satisfaction from locating benchmarks. Has anyone ever tried to find benchmarks on a military base? There seems to be a few located along the old Sante Fe railway that runs through Pendleton.

[+Butano]

I found AH5765 at the Onizuka Air Force Station in Sunnyvale, CA. It is a reset of the original (which is still marked as there, though obviously it was destroyed). It was fun finding one that very few people would have access too, though trying to grab an image of it was a little difficult -- no cameras allowed.

[+NorthWes]

I am a Marine Stationed on Camp Pendleton, and was just introduced to the sport of geocaching. I am loving it. For some reason, I get more satisfaction from locating benchmarks. Has anyone ever tried to find benchmarks on a military base? There seems to be a few located along the old Sante Fe railway that runs through Pendleton.

 

Wow - I have to wait until my dad (USAF E9 Ret'd) visits me to get out on the nearby AF base and hunt the marks. You'd make a real friend in the game if you invited the Klemmers or the 2 Old Farts out to the base to hunt marks with you! I know just what you mean about preferring the benchmark hunt over the cache hunt - it's harder and more satisfying to find a piece of enduring geographic history.

 

That railroad will have marks for sure (railroads breed benchmarks like rabbits...), and I believe there are some set down in the Amphib Warfare area along the coast from a previous perusal of Camp Pendleton topo maps. There are doubtless quite a few marks set by the Corps of Engineers around the Camp that won't be in the national database for cadastral references... oh well. There's usually benchmarks set near satellite comm sites or airfields as well as along the road & railways.

 

At one time folks were 'concerned' about the national security aspect of reporting the continued existence of a known data point registered in a national non-secure database, but the availability of stunningly clear satellite photos from on-line servers has rendered that concern moot.

[wardawg2]

you're right - the issue of photoraphy on military installations always seems to ruffle some feathers. There is a lot of dirt roads and training areas on this base, I have already been "escorted" out of some of them while looking for benchmarks. Most of the time I am in my cammies, so I can just stand fast and usually no one sees me. It was worth the risk though, the scenery of southern California without the crowds of people and plethora of roads and structures is amazing. It is my hope that the untouched training areas will help the preservation of the benchmarks within, but my findings thus far reveal otherwise. about half of the ones I searched for were nowhere to be found.

 

I found one benchmark from 1939, my first one, mounted in an old bridge of the railway. It took me a few days of walking the old tracks looking for the specific bridge, but it was well worth it. The bridge was overgrown with trees and shrubs, and it turns out I walked over it twice before I realized it was once a bridge!

[+Shorelander]

I know some people have taken rubbings. Good way to at least know the general look of the disk, especially if it's not one on Buckner's list!

[68-eldo]

I am a Marine Stationed on Camp Pendleton, and was just introduced to the sport of geocaching. I am loving it. For some reason, I get more satisfaction from locating benchmarks. Has anyone ever tried to find benchmarks on a military base? There seems to be a few located along the old Sante Fe railway that runs through Pendleton.

 

One of my first benchmark recoveries was TU1419. If you go to the google satellite view you will see why cameras were not allowed. In this area the marines are authorized to use lethal force. But as a 34 year employee there I knew what I could do and what I could not.

 

I no longer have my CAC card so I won’t be doing much more military bases unless I do a visit request. It’s vary unlikely I will be able to go back to this specific area but I may be able to do less sensitive areas on some of the other bases around here.

 

If you don’t violate any rules (especially security rules) there should be no problem recovering benchmarks on a military base.

 

By the way, camera phones are also not allowed. On this base if they found you with a camera phone they would confiscate the phone and review the pictures on the phone. If there were no pictures of the base on the phone they would let you have the phone back with a warning. If they found pictures of the base the phone would be destroyed with a large hammer. No word on what they would do to you in that case.

Edited December 1, 2006 by 68-eldo

[+Klemmer]

Hey Wardawg2:

I'm just up the road a piece in Orange County, if you'd ever like some "old-timer" (in benchmark hunting terms!) BM hunting company (on or off Pendelton). I'm ex - Air Force, though.... sorry!

 

I managed to find & log a handful of Benchmarks at March Field out in Riverside this summer at their open house, in between air show performances. Cameras were no problem that day! DX2729 was my favorite. You can do a search of the nearest benchmarks from there for the rest. I've been down to Pendelton on business a few times (pre-BM hunting days), but not lately (my company makes things that go on Cobras & LCAC's). I managed a few benchmarks & caches near Dyess AFB in Texas last year, but not on base. WAY too sensitive stuff going on there at the time, including some of what I was up to!

 

Feel free to email me thru GC.com or PM me thru the forum if I can be of any assistance. There are a couple of interesting old marks in & around the old mission in San Juan Capistrano down in your area also. Never did find the one at the train station....

Take care!

-- Klemmer

[CoyoteTrust]

Over the summer I was lucky to get access to the US Coast Guard Great Lakes HQ in Milwaukee. Since I had a military ID, that made things a bit easier, but I explained that seeking the marks wasn't official business but just a hobby. It still took a few minutes to get cleared thru the Command Section to go on the base, esp. with a camera, but they OKed it and an escort tagged along.

 

The first one I found was THIS ONE, a couple of etchings in the concrete base of a radio tower. The escort kinda had a weird look on his face, so I said, "I know, ya can't believe this is all I'm looking for but there are different kinds of marks". He said something like "no, well, yeah, but I can't believe you actually found that.

 

Take a look at the log and pics, and click the 'seek nearest' marks, too, if you're interested enough.

Edited December 3, 2006 by CoyoteTrust

[mloser]

A little over a year ago I was lucky enough to make contact with someone at Fort Indiantown Gap, currently a National Guard training center, and be escorted to places I would never have been allowed alone. A lot of the base has public roads running through it and there are marks along them that are easy to find, but there are marks in slightly more sensitive places that require permission, and a few that require escort, including some at the edge of their firing range, and KW3080, which is deep within the training area and is on a helicopter landing area. My escort drove me up to that one, since he had a key to the locked gate at the bottom of the hill. Overall I think I recovered about 20 marks within the base, and probably 6 or 7 required my escort. For another 5 or so I had to get permission (on this low key base there was some confusion about who I was even supposed to GET that permission from, but get it I finally did) and I spent a good afternoon completing my hunt.