How many geocaches are in town?

[+ChocolatePizzaRedWine]

Hi all--

 

I'm doing an interview about geocaching with a local reporter, and I'd like to be able to tell her how many geocaches are active in our town. I'm sure there's an easy way to find that information, but it's not obvious to me at the moment. Any help you could give would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance!

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

Hi all--

 

I'm doing an interview about geocaching with a local reporter, and I'd like to be able to tell her how many geocaches are active in our town. I'm sure there's an easy way to find that information, but it's not obvious to me at the moment. Any help you could give would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Run a pocket query, centered on a cache near the middle of town, with a radius that covers the town. It may not be a perfect count, but should be close.

 

[Edit for typos]

Edited December 6, 2011 by BBWolf+3Pigs

[+Walts Hunting]

At the risk of 4te's ire the answer is GSAK. Although if your town is small enough the 1000 limit on the pq's might be fine. But if there are more use GSAK to load 6000 from a center point using the api.

[+Chief301]

An easier way to run a PQ in a case like this is use the Google Map search feature. Zoom in or out til your town is neatly centered in the map view. Then on the left hand side you can generate a PQ of all the caches encompassed in the map view.

[knowschad]

Hi all--

 

I'm doing an interview about geocaching with a local reporter, and I'd like to be able to tell her how many geocaches are active in our town. I'm sure there's an easy way to find that information, but it's not obvious to me at the moment. Any help you could give would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance!

 

What is your town, and what do you consider to be the town in terms of what you are looking for (radius, city limits, etc)

[+ChocolatePizzaRedWine]

You guys are awesome! Thanks for the quick responses.

 

I'm in a small New England town (Westford MA). I had thought I'd be able to somehow search for caches within the town limits or within the zip code, but still can't figure out how to do that. The pocket query worked for a rough estimate, though I think it's a bit high. The hard part was figuring out a reasonable radius, since the town is oblong rather than round/square. I'm glad town is small enough that I didn't need GSAK... it's on my list of things to experiment with but I haven't gotten there yet! I tried to make the Google Map search/query work, but the town shape wasn't quite right.

 

Oh well, I suppose that if the number I gave her was high, it's a good incentive to get out and place more caches before the article comes out next week! :-)

 

Thanks again!

[+Chokecherry]

What I would honestly do because you're a small town is pull up the caches on a map. Enter your zipcode for a search I would guess limiting the distance to a 20 mile radius would be more than adequate (though if it's like a few towns here maybe not so much). Then I would go to a cache page and pull up the google map. If it doesn't look like much I would count them. I'm pretty sure where I am there's less than 20 caches in the town I live in but you might have more out there.

[+briansnat]

I counted about 70 but was kind of unclear on the exact border with Chelmsford so that would be a rough ballpark figure.

[AZcachemeister]

Hi all--

 

I'm doing an interview about geocaching with a local reporter, and I'd like to be able to tell her how many geocaches are active in our town. I'm sure there's an easy way to find that information, but it's not obvious to me at the moment. Any help you could give would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance!

 

What is your town, and what do you consider to be the town in terms of what you are looking for (radius, city limits, etc)

 

The answer is ten.

Exactly ten.

Your job is to figure out what town it is.

[+Going to Carolina]

Pull up the full-sized map on any cache in Westford. Convert to My Topo and start counting. The town line is very recognizable all the way around.

[+jellis]

Problem there with it being a very small town, the puzzles that are showing up may be in another town because of the 2 mile min. distance. Hopefully not.

[+Coldgears]

Hi all--

 

I'm doing an interview about geocaching with a local reporter, and I'd like to be able to tell her how many geocaches are active in our town. I'm sure there's an easy way to find that information, but it's not obvious to me at the moment. Any help you could give would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance!

Since the town is quite small, you might want to mention that there is so and so many caches within 10 miles of the town.

 

This will accomplish two things, it will help establish that it is not just in that town (I've had muggles ask me, "So this is done all around Philadelphia?" No, it is done around the world.

 

More importantly, it will give people a better estimate. If a town is two square miles, that doesn't really give you much leeway, with most people living close to the border, it makes sense they would cross the border to find a cache. They probably cross the border daily for everyday things, such as tanning, food shopping, and haircuts.

 

Maybe you could have it worded like, "There are 20 caches within are small town, and about 200 within 10 miles!"

 

If you are the one being interviewed, answer the question like this, "There are only 20 caches in this town, but keep in mind, the town is quite small. In fact, within the short driving distance of 10 miles, there is over 200 aches!"

[+Markwell]

Since the town is quite small, you might want to mention that there is so and so many caches within 10 miles of the town.

 

This will accomplish two things, it will help establish that it is not just in that town (I've had muggles ask me, "So this is done all around Philadelphia?" No, it is done around the world.

 

More importantly, it will give people a better estimate. If a town is two square miles, that doesn't really give you much leeway, with most people living close to the border, it makes sense they would cross the border to find a cache. They probably cross the border daily for everyday things, such as tanning, food shopping, and haircuts.

 

Maybe you could have it worded like, "There are 20 caches within are small town, and about 200 within 10 miles!"

 

If you are the one being interviewed, answer the question like this, "There are only 20 caches in this town, but keep in mind, the town is quite small. In fact, within the short driving distance of 10 miles, there is over 200 aches!"

That's really a good answer. Within 50 miles of your town, there are 9,777 caches...

 

Link: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?lat=42.57926&lng=-71.43784&dist=50

[knowschad]

If you want to try it with GSAK, take a look at the polygon filter feature. You will be shown a map, and you can trace the exact permimeter that you want to look at.

[+TerraViators]

That's interesting to know. I've never met another cacher who lives in the same town proper (Corinth, TX) as I. I've met several from neighboring towns and even a good geopal who lives a mile a way but on the other side of the border from my town.