Ground Zero coordinates

[+Thompy8]

Hello all,

 

This is my first forum post, as my frustration level for this topic is getting as high as a nano in a state forest. I have seen a few town "ground zero" caches and have been wanting to try them. I can't seem to figure out how to get the coordinates for these unknown caches. I have a good idea where they originate, but I can't find any site to verify. Maybe I'm not looking at something that should be obvious to me, or...........Where can I get them or compute them? Any help would be greatly apprciated

 

Thank You,

Thompy8

[+The VanDucks]

We've been geocaching for about 5 years now, but I've never heard of "ground zero" caches. Are they puzzle caches (marked with a question mark on the description page)? Can you list one or two GC numbers for some you're looking at so another cacher on line can look at them?

 

The only reference I know of for ground zero, or GZ, would be the final coordinates, i.e. the actual location of the cache container.

[+The VanDucks]

I saw some Ground Zero caches listed in Massachusetts; is that where you are?

 

Try information from this Forum post from 2007:

 

Prime Suspect Aug 11 2007, 06:06 AM Post #3

 

QUOTE(tarbal @ Aug 11 2007, 07:05 AM)

 

I have had several caches that call for baseline coordinates for towns from geocaching.com. How do I obtain this information?

 

Thank you for your help

tarbaL

 

Mapmakers have to decide on a single set of coordinates to represent a town or city. They usually choose the center of the downtown business district (for big cities), or a courthouse, post office, or town square.

 

If you go to the Search by State box on the main geocaching page, you can select a state to search. From that page, you can select a city. Once the caches for the city are displayed, you'll see the coordinates it's using as the city center at the top of the page.

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

Since these are usually puzzle cahces, I will not give away exact details on how to solve them.

 

"Ground Zero" caches usually involve finding the "center point" Groundspeak/geocaching.com uses when you search for caches in a particular city or zoom the map to a given city.

 

You can use the geocaching.com website to get the exact coordinates (just not gonna say how).

[+Thompy8]

I'm a Massachusetts cacher. I have two that I'm watching. If it is in the geocaching.com domain, I will continue to search/figur it out. It's just not going well, lol. They are listed as puzzle/unkown caches. Thank you for the point in the right direction.

 

Thompy8

[+The VanDucks]

When I got home from work, I checked to see what answers you had received. I tried putting in our town as the location on the Seek a Geocache page, with distance only one mile; that gave me the coordinates for the center of town at the top of the page. I can also pull it up on a Google map (not the geocaching google map, the other one), and it shows me the center of town. See this link:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=N+38%c2%b0+5...3.159+(GCYE86)+

 

Good luck!

[+The VanDucks]

Ooops! My mistake; I see that link I just gave you is actually for OUR cache near the center of our town. But I did first just put in our town name, Herndon, VA, and it gave me the coordinates for the town itself as N 38 58.173, W 077 23.166; that seems about right since our cache is near the crossroads at the center of the town. Try putting in the name of the town you're searching for and see if that works for you.

[Skippermark]

"Ground Zero" caches usually involve finding the "center point" Groundspeak/geocaching.com uses when you search for caches in a particular city or zoom the map to a given city.

 

You can use the geocaching.com website to get the exact coordinates (just not gonna say how).

Yes, and the part of the site that is used to solve them changed a couple years ago, but the method is the same.

Edited November 3, 2010 by Skippermark