Status check: Number of caches in your area

[+JBnW]

Just a question from an observation I've been observing over the last several months: Are the total number of active caches in your area increasing, steady, or decreasing?

 

I'm sure many here keep some sort of off-line database of all the caches in your state, province, etc. I've got one for KS, and have been observing the total number of active caches in the state hasn't grown by much since about December, 2013. That's when I had to create a "Kansas #12" date-range-based PQ to keep up with things. That PQ started off with about 120 caches then, and after re-setting my date ranges this morning, is all the way up to 154 (it was up to 643 prior to resetting the date ranges). I know it's a bit more complicated than that, but I'm fairly comfortable saying that, since December, there's been about as many archivals as new publications. For the record, I'm showing 12,211 active caches (and events) in KS.

 

What are your observations?

[+niraD]

I just checked the number of caches within 10 miles of my home. It has gone up slightly since the last time I checked, which was about 6 months ago. So I'd have to say it's slightly increasing.

 

For the record, there are now 2068 listings within 10 miles of my home. Last December, there were 2046 listings within 10 miles of my home.

[+Isonzo Karst]

I did a series to create a whole state of FL gpx from March 7 2014.

 

There were 43194 caches Today in Florida, 44104

 

44104 - so only an increase of ~910 in 3 months. Summer is the slow (hot) season here. New caches peak between Jan - April

 

I did some munging on that whole state gpx file, back in March, if anybody cares, some stats:

CITO 11 Event 53

Virts 130 Webcam 9

Trads 38,940 90.2%

Trad as micro with difficulty and terrain > 1.5 1.5 12,028 27.8%

Mystery 2682 6.2% (342 with Challenge in title)

Multi 947 2.2%

LBH 192 0.4%

Earth 174 .4%

Wherigo 64 0.1%

 

Caches with placed dates from March 7 2013, ie in the the last year - 10,300 - 23.8%.

 

Half of all active caches placed since Sept 08 2011; in the last 2 and half years .

 

645 caches more than 10 years old.

2000 - 1

2001- 52

2002 - 163

2003 - 306

2004 - 604

2005 - 943

2006 - 1456

2007 - 1781

2008 - 2378

2009 - 3528

 

Caches 8 years old - 44% micro 20% small 32% regular 0.5% large 87% Traditional (virts account for the rest)

Caches in the last 2 years - 66% micro 22% small 11% regular 0.8% large 90.3% Traditional

[+TopShelfRob]

I just checked the number of caches within 10 miles of my home. It has gone up slightly since the last time I checked, which was about 6 months ago. So I'd have to say it's slightly increasing.

 

For the record, there are now 2068 listings within 10 miles of my home. Last December, there were 2046 listings within 10 miles of my home.

2068, wow! There are 19 within ten miles of me. (And I didn't think it was that many, ten miles is a little further than I estimated in my head.)

[+niraD]

For the record, there are now 2068 listings within 10 miles of my home. Last December, there were 2046 listings within 10 miles of my home.

2068, wow! There are 19 within ten miles of me. (And I didn't think it was that many, ten miles is a little further than I estimated in my head.)

Yeah, and that 10-mile radius includes several square miles of the San Francisco Bay, where the cache density is significantly lower than it is on land.

[jholly]

For the record, there are now 2068 listings within 10 miles of my home. Last December, there were 2046 listings within 10 miles of my home.

2068, wow! There are 19 within ten miles of me. (And I didn't think it was that many, ten miles is a little further than I estimated in my head.)

Yeah, and that 10-mile radius includes several square miles of the San Francisco Bay, where the cache density is significantly lower than it is on land.

Yeah, but not zero.

[+BlackRose67]

When I click on the "Search for Nearby Geocaches" link, I get 15,969 within 100 miles.

 

I created a PQ for caches within 10 miles of my home coords and it maxxed out the 1000 cache limit.

 

After 2 1/2 years of caching, my Traditional unfound cache PQ still returns 1000 caches each time I run it.

[+terratin]

We have 565 caches in the whole country, and the numbers are decreasing while there are more cachers in the country, compared to 2013. This is a very nice tool for this: http://project-gc.com/Home/Overview and I think it also works without signing in.

[+TopShelfRob]

I don't want to go to far off-topic here, but I can't imagine how different of a game Geocaching is for people who have so many caches nearby them. I am aware of all of the specific caches everywhere in my area and I intentionally try not to grab all of them as fast as I could -- I don't want to wipe everything around me and have to drive 50 miles or have to take a trip to get to any unfound cache. I'll knock out one here and there near me, usually if I happen to be by it, or on the way to or back from a longer trip, but I certainly don't want to clear the whole area anytime soon.

 

If I had 2000 within ten miles of me, I'd sure play the game a lot differently! (And I'd have a lot more finds, too)

[+qtbluemoon]

868 caches within 10 miles of my house, 568 unfound by me

[+GilkerscleughCachers]

Within 10 miles of my home, there is 57 caches.

31 of which I own

8 of which were placed in the time I have been caching (since Feb 2013)

5 of which I am yet to find

5 of which require maintenance which they are unlikely to get.

 

The number is likely to increase as I have some to hide but it won't increase by much.

[+JesandTodd]

1600 caches within 10 miles

4900 within 20 miles

22754 within 100 miles

 

40 5/5's within 20 mi.

[+Markwell]

I have 5,100 caches within 20 miles of home.

Over the last 18 months, 1707 caches have been placed, and 846 caches have been archived.

There was a net increase of 861 caches.

So caches are being placed twice as fast as they are being archived.

 

====================================

Just another observation:

Of the newly placed caches, 60% were "parking lot" caches

Of the ones archived, 43% were "parking lot" caches

In my area, parking lot caches are being placed 17% faster than they are being archived.

 

Currently 44% of the caches within 20 miles of my home are "parking lot".

[+JohnCNA]

 

Currently 44% of the caches within 20 miles of my home are "parking lot".

That boggles the mind! Are these all truly LPCs in a parking lot or is that a generalization covering similar urban micros?

[+Team Dredd]

We have been caching for a little over a year and began placing some months ago. We have talked about this very subject recently in our county. Not sure of the exact number, but we have notifications set up anytime there are new caches in our area, and we get some notifications but most are in the high populated city to our south (they show up in notifications due to their distance from our home). In the time we have been caching there is only one cacher we know of placing caches in the rural western area of our county and only a couple. There have been a few new ones on the more populated side of the county but most of them were placed on a creek and can only be reached by small shallow boat like a kayak or canoe. We do have quite a few listed in the area.

 

What is troubling is that most of the caches around here are placed either a long time ago or by cachers that are no longer active and are not being maintained so they are slowly degrading and or being archived. We have adopted some caches to keep them going but most of the CO's no longer answer emails when maintenance is needed. We have fixed up some caches just to keep them going as I have seen some others do. We have a lot of good cachers around here and we have met some of them personally. What we don't have is a lot of people who hide and maintain caches. We both wish more cachers would hide caches and maintain them along with finding them, especially in the rural areas.

 

Looking at the cache numbers in the area they haven't decreased that much, but the number of ACTIVE cachers sure has went down.

[+Markwell]

 

Currently 44% of the caches within 20 miles of my home are "parking lot".

That boggles the mind! Are these all truly LPCs in a parking lot or is that a generalization covering similar urban micros?

I said "parking lot", not LPC. I review the caches that come in on a map, and if it is marked as "Park and Grab" attribute, or if it's a traditional and I see it on the map like this, I tag it as a "parking lot". Those are the ones in that 44%. While not all specifically LPCs, they reside in a parking lot.

[+Roman!]

I think here there are more caches only because there are more caches being published than archived but I feel there are significantly less caches published this year over last year as well as less finds on caches. Overall I feel in my area caching is on a decline.

[+The_Incredibles_]

I haven't got any numbers for you, but I'm pretty sure the overall number of caches is increasing. Thank goodness most are on hiking trails/in public parks and not so many parking lot caches.

Edited July 2, 2014 by The_Incredibles_

[+Harry Dolphin]

My pocket queries cover all of New Jersey (Cape May is 102 miles away, and I don't get to South Jersey very often), and any cache (not found, not on my ignore list) within 65 miles of the Dolphinarium. That gives me 24000 caches to find! That's enough for me to work through! I really would appreciate being able to set the GPX files to ignore Long Island counties. With tolls and traffic, I do not go there anymore. Not with enough other caches nearby. I can set a filter on GSAK to eliminate them, but it would be nice to eliminate them from my GPX files. I'm far more likely to go to Connecticut, South Jersey or Pennsylvania than to Long Island. Oh, well. So, I don't pay attention to the change in the number of caches available. 24000 caches will keep me busy for a very long time!

[+Scratch Ankle]

There are about 30-40 active in a roughly 10 mile radius from me. This is pretty drastically reduced from when I started as one CO committed geocide after I posted a needs maintenance on one and later a needs archived when I posted that it definitely was missing since a spoiler video showed that my guess was correct. That removed quite a few. Another CO has several in the area. One was finally archived after 3 years of DNF and NM postings. A couple months ago I posted a NM on my first find as I knew it was no longer there (across from my church). I just checked and he hasn't responded but 2 of the 4 "found" logs after that weren't finds. Another said it was 22' away. Last posting before my NM was that it was on the ground so apparently it got moved to another tree at some point. Come to think of it, it was on the ground when I first found it and I had to do what I thought would be temporary maintenance on it. I suspect one of his guardrail caches is missing as well. Another cacher mentioned it -- I haven't looked.

 

I believe only two caches for that area were placed in the past couple years and one of them I was responsible for archiving almost immediately. It was in a sensitive business and on the building so I checked with the business before looking for it and she demanded I remove it then and there. No permission and placed by someone from several states away apparently with no local maintenance plan. They archived when I contacted them and told me to keep it.

 

So we are going backwards. And yeah, I should hide some. I do have one very nice one after all. I haven't give it a lot of thought but don't really see any place that is interesting enough and where I could get permission.

[+JBnW]

My weekly updated PQs have now run. In Kansas, 17 new caches published, 16 "old" caches archived (published between 2009-2014). Net of +1.

[+aed8656]

Within 10 miles of my home, there are 83 caches. I have found 42 of those, of the remaining, several are still "active" but have been missing anywhere from 6 months to 3 years.

[+Scratch Ankle]

Update -- someone just placed a series on a road in my area I defined above. 29 new caches.

[+baack40]

The caches in my immediate area is decreasing. I have archived about 50 of my caches recently and not planning on replacing them until Groundspeak does something about the free app situation. I don't like making caches premium just to keep the free app users away because it hinders legitimate cachers without premium membership. Special caches getting TFTC logs or "another find for me" logs take the fun out of placing special caches. Several of my caches have come up missing and logs say "now what am I going to do with all these? Its been fun tho." Ofcourse a free app user, probably kids. I am trying to keep one series of mine going but have replaced at least 10 of the containers recently. Besides the aggrevation of it all, its getting expensive. Several cachers have asked me to keep this series open until they get a chance to complete it so if anymore come up missing will just replace with a pill bottle or something instead of replacing the "Hosts" for the caches. Very frustrating. I keep having to delete logs from the caches too. Once my three series of caches have pretty much been found by all the locals will delete all the rest. Has kinds of ruined the game for me.

 

I get the notifications for the area on archives and placements and the archives win. Sad

Edited July 20, 2014 by baack40

[+JBnW]

I get the notifications for the area on archives and placements and the archives win. Sad

And that's what I've been seeing for a while now, at least since the start of the year. I would agree that total numbers are way up now as compared to 2012, but something else has been going on since January or so. For the two weeks after starting this thread, there was a net change (new publications minus archivals...not counting events) of -4 state-wide. And like baack40 unfortunately mentions, many of these are from long-time cachers archiving en mass. At least around here, this has been going on for months, several new publications every week, and about the same or more archivals to go with them leading to a slow steady decline. It paints a bit of a different picture of the "growth" of the game...sad indeed.

[+Team OPJim]

There are several hundred within 20 miles but I have found most. Doing a daily find here would be impossible unless I started a new account. One of the issues of living in a rural area.

 

As for our state we are still down. A few months ago over 4000 caches were archived within a three day period. The Arizona state trust land board suddenly decided to ban all geocaches so Groundspeak was forced to archive them. I've yet to hear why

[+TerraViators]

There are currently 584 geocaches within 5 miles of my home coordinates.

 

I live north of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.

[+hzoi]

I don't want to go to far off-topic here, but I can't imagine how different of a game Geocaching is for people who have so many caches nearby them. I am aware of all of the specific caches everywhere in my area and I intentionally try not to grab all of them as fast as I could -- I don't want to wipe everything around me and have to drive 50 miles or have to take a trip to get to any unfound cache. I'll knock out one here and there near me, usually if I happen to be by it, or on the way to or back from a longer trip, but I certainly don't want to clear the whole area anytime soon.

 

If I had 2000 within ten miles of me, I'd sure play the game a lot differently! (And I'd have a lot more finds, too)

That's what makes it interesting for us to move around every 2-3 years. Our first home location in Wiesbaden, Germany, was cache-rich. Then we moved to Charlottesville, VA, which was MUCH lower density. Then Montgomery, Alabama, which was pretty good. Currently Medicine Park, Oklahoma, which has more than Charlottesville did when we lived in Charlottesville, but less than Charlottesville does now. We're here for one more year and already starting to run out of caches that aren't micros or magnetic key hides listed as "small" -- guess we''d better pace ourselves a little better.

 

For the record, caches within 50 miles of our different home locations (and excluding our hides/finds):

 

Wiesbaden, Germany: 29,525 (29,151 - clearly many of our old finds have been archived since we left in 2009)

Charlottesville, Virginia: 1,784 (1,592 - actually not much change since we left in 2010)

Montgomery, Alabama: 2,012 (1,163)

Medicine Park, Oklahoma: 1,212 (926)

 

Putting the radius out to 100 miles:

 

Wiesbaden, Germany: 101,575 (!!) active caches

Charlottesville, Virginia: 10,473

Montgomery, Alabama: 10,111

Medicine Park, Oklahoma: 7,806

[+TerraViators]

Forgive me for bumping an old thread but I found it interesting that in my July 2014 post, there were 584 geocaches within a 5-mile radius of my home coordinates. Nearly two later, that number has increased by only 9 geocaches. I expected a larger number.

[+Isonzo Karst]

From my old post, increase of only 200 caches in Florida over the last two years:

44,104 June 28, 2014

44,309 April 11 2016

[+SwineFlew]

Forgive me for bumping an old thread but I found it interesting that in my July 2014 post, there were 584 geocaches within a 5-mile radius of my home coordinates. Nearly two later, that number has increased by only 9 geocaches. I expected a larger number.

This! Very common in many area.

[+hzoi]

Putting the radius out to 100 miles:

 

Wiesbaden, Germany: 101,575 (!!) active caches

Charlottesville, Virginia: 10,473

Montgomery, Alabama: 10,111

Medicine Park, Oklahoma: 7,806

 

Wiesbaden: +7259

Charlottesville: +867

Montgomery: -82

Medicine Park: +89

[+SwineFlew]

Putting the radius out to 100 miles:

 

Wiesbaden, Germany: 101,575 (!!) active caches

Charlottesville, Virginia: 10,473

Montgomery, Alabama: 10,111

Medicine Park, Oklahoma: 7,806

 

Wiesbaden: +7259

Charlottesville: +867

Montgomery: -82

Medicine Park: +89

 

Wow at Germany... I am sure its the whole country. They must be doing something right.

[+ZeppelinDT]

Definitely increasing in my area. A few months ago I ran some searches to see how many caches were placed in my area each year. This covers all of Long Island (i.e., Suffolk County and Nassau County, but NOT Brooklyn or Queens). The numbers are the total number of new caches that were placed in each year (this INCLUDES caches that have now been archived). It doesn't account for the differential or the rate of archiving, but it does show that cache placement increased dramatically last year, and is on pace this year to surpass last year. I think it's safe to say that new caches are outpacing archived caches and that the overall number is steadily increasing. Based on my subjective interpretation, the vast majority of new caches placed in my area are micro PnGs (LPCs, street sign nanos, etc).

 

2000: 0 caches hidden

2001: 46 caches hidden

2002: 73 caches hidden

2003: 190 caches hidden

2004: 335 caches hidden

2005: 454 caches hidden

2006: 674 caches hidden

2007: 589 caches hidden

2008: 615 caches hidden

2009: 390 caches hidden

2010: 579 caches hidden

2011: 573 caches hidden

2012: 684 caches hidden

2013: 632 caches hidden

2014: 623 caches hidden

2015: 792 caches hidden

2016: 238 caches hidden (as of April 11th)

 

This equates to a total of 7,487 caches that have been hidden on Long Island since Day 1. There are currently 2,467 active caches in Suffolk County and 1,229 active caches in Nassau County, for a total of 3,696 active Long Island caches (which means 3,791 have been archived)

Edited April 12, 2016 by ZeppelinDT

[+Clarkbowman]

A lot

[+Isonzo Karst]

bump 

43,929 caches Sep 1, 2017-  Florida, all caches

from my previous posts in this thread:

43,194   March 7 2014 - FL

44,309 April 11 2016 - FL

Original poster reported:
12,211 active caches (and events) in KS June 28 2014

12,069 active caches (and events) in KS Sept 1 2017

 

 

Edited September 1, 2017 by Isonzo Karst
edited to add FLorida to my numbers ;-)

[+qtbluemoon]

In June of 2014, there were 868 caches within 10 miles of my house.

Today, there are only 679.

About a 22% decrease in a little over 3 years.

[Blue Square Thing]

Part of a 16km radius for me is at sea, but the number placed has decreased substantially in the last two years. There are exactly 800 caches within the area, including 18 which are currently disabled. This is in the eastern UK.

The numbers are the numbers place from 1 September of the year until 31 August the following year (so, the top figure includes everything in the last year). I excluded all event caches and included all archived and disabled caches.

• 2016: 83
• 2015: 77
• 2014: 215
• 2013: 197
• 2012: 199
• 2011: 276
• 2010: 234
• 2009: 106
• 2008: 17
• and then tiny numbers each year going back to 2001.

There may be an element of the area simply becoming saturated, although my gut feeling is that in the area covered by that radius there have been people leaving geocaching or becoming a lot less active and no longer hiding caches and that there hasn't been anyone new come along and fill the void. A set of 100 mystery caches dating from 2013-2014 are plastered across the southern side of the radius and don't encourage me to hide anything in that area and might impact other people in the same way I suppose.

Edited September 1, 2017 by Blue Square Thing