National Register of Historic Places

[+rbdupuy]

There is another thread mentioning wreckchasing as another alternative twist to geo-searching, and (always being one to add a new or interesting catch to the game) here I propose another possibility.

 

I recently stumbled upon the National Register of Historic Places database online. I had long wondered how to get a "list" of the National Register, and found their "official" database at www.nr.nps.gov and before anybody says it, yes, yes, I realized I just typed NPS, and that the National Register falls under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service (an unfortunately sore spot for many cachers). Also, I found a more friendly site at: www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com.

 

I thought, that if it were done in the same manner as benchmark hunting, then it would be acceptable and a lot of fun for those who find history (and/or tourism) interesting. It would be the same as a pre-existing, permanent, virtual cache with no "owner." The DB on the dot-gov site seemed to have coordintes somewhere in the data, and I tried two in my area, (after conversions) and they were pretty reliable. Unfortunately neither lent themselves well to a "real" cache (let me point out that they were not technically on NPS soil- before I get blasted). That being said, they were still a lot of fun to find, and to read about.

 

I just thought that this would be a nice source of coordinates for people interested in hunting other thatn caches or benchmarks. Also, I would be the first person to recommend it as an offshoot of geocaching if the benchmark hunting takes off as well as I think it will. I've already found 2 and plan on more. I just hope I'm not piling the work onto an obviously idea-heavy, and I'm guessing work-load-heavy Geocaching development team.

 

RBDupuy

[+OblongFred]

That is a good idea. Unfortunatly, several registered sites I know of are on private land (And before anyone says anything, I havn't gone to either .gov/com sites, yet), once owned by famous and/or prosperous persons of the Cleveland area.

 

Maybe this will be another off chute someday.

 

Never hold a cat and a Dustbuster at the same time.

[iryshe]

Although many historical places on the register are, indeed, private residences, they are required to allow tours either by appointment or available certain times a year (if I'm not mistaken). Regardless, most of them could be photographed from the road, so in most cases it wouldn't be difficult to see the outside.

 

Yes, I picked up a copy of the database of historic places. Even found a place here in washington where a former ancestor of mine used to live! It's a good idea and one we've been thinking about. We just need to work on the tools to allow adding these faster without having to create a new subsite each time we find some interesting data.

 

Jeremy

 

Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location