How do I determine a land owner?

[+Korichnovui]

How deep does one go in terms of due diligence to get landowner permission before making a hide?

For example, I'm looking at the area around these coordinates:

46.209584, -118.962338

The Walla Walla WA county assessor tells me that this land belongs to the "US Government"

I've compared this to a lot of other land that has geocaches on it and it seems okay

But is there some way to secure permission...?

[+Max and 99]

I don't mean to discourage you, but here's my story:

I went to a LOT of trouble (TWICE), travelled to OKC to the county office that had the property records, printed off the information, and wrote a nice letter to the land owners asking if I could place a geocache there. They were nice enough to write back, and said NO, please don't put a geocache there. Okie dokie.

 

Several months later, someone placed a cache in the location which I was denied permission. I explained that to them, and posted a NA. Talk about ticked off! They were MAD as heck, and told me,  "I checked with the neighbors and they said it's OK, and  besides, NO ONE owns that property (about 4 acres).  No one owns it? No one? Not according to the county records! Anyway, I spoke with the reviewer who didn't care and let the cache stay.  That left me very discouraged from doing a lot of work to get permission. Now, if I can't ask the person directly or speak to someone from the business, I don't bother. I'm not going to go to all that work only to have the reviewer not care that we're ignoring the property owner's request.

 

Sorry, I got a little bit off topic.

 

Contacting the US govt for permission sounds like a daunting task. You may consider asking your local reviewer, who is often aware of permission issues in your area.

[+STNolan]

24 minutes ago, Korichnovui said:

How deep does one go in terms of due diligence to get landowner permission before making a hide?

For example, I'm looking at the area around these coordinates:

46.209584, -118.962338

The Walla Walla WA county assessor tells me that this land belongs to the "US Government"

I've compared this to a lot of other land that has geocaches on it and it seems okay

But is there some way to secure permission...?

 

Looks like that land is part of the McNary National Wildlife Refuge which is run out of an office in Burbank, WA

 

That being said, I'd start there... but I warn you that getting permission in a Wildlife Refuge is often difficult given the stated purpose of those areas. 

Best of luck!

 

-STNolan

[+MNTA]

24 minutes ago, STNolan said:

 

Looks like that land is part of the McNary National Wildlife Refuge which is run out of an office in Burbank, WA

 

That being said, I'd start there... but I warn you that getting permission in a Wildlife Refuge is often difficult given the stated purpose of those areas. 

Best of luck!

 

-STNolan

 

National Wildlife Refuges: 

 The US Fish & Wildlife Service has issued a blanket ban on all caches in NWRs. Physical caches placed in these locations will be rejected unless explicit permission is obtained.

 

Good luck! My policy is if you have to ask the answer is probably no. But you never know till you try.

 

I too had an awesome spot scoped out, beautiful easy climbing tree. Our county tax accessors in our area are mostly online with interactive maps. You can see were easements for public access and who owns what. Then I found out the our Metro Parks Department owned the land and was in an undeveloped park thus excluded from having caches in there, despite three other within the parks boundaries.  The reviewer would have nixed the climbing which is also against this groups policy. Oh well.

 

 

[+noncentric]

If the OP isn't already aware, then the Regional Geocaching Policies Wiki is a good place to start.  That is where the info that MNTA posted above, about NWR's, comes from.

 

https://wiki.Groundspeak.com/display/GEO/Washington#Washington-NationalWildlifeRefuges:

[+palmetto]

I do a lot of property ownership detective work.  For your inquiry, I went to google.com/maps/ and entered your coords into the search box.

This returned a map indicating the property as McNary NWR.

Checking the Regional Policy wiki for Washington state, I see that you'd need a high level of verifiable and explicit permission for a cache.  This wiki is linked in the permission section of the listing guidelines. 

Generally US National Parks and US National Wildlife Refuges have quite restrictive geocaching policy.

US National Forests vary widely, from no permission required , to expensive fee permits, to just no.

US BLM lands likewise: yes, no, maybe. Check the state wiki for that info.

 

There are Google map errors. I own caches in a Florida State Forest, the caches have state forestry geocache permits, as required.  Google map identifies the property as a National Wildlife Refuge.   Another large area in Florida has a mix of state, county, and federal ownership - each with different geocaching policy (no permission required, free permit, verbal permission and no caches allowed) .  The Google map calls it all one thing, a state WMA.

 

[+Lynx Humble]

6 hours ago, noncentric said:

If the OP isn't already aware, then the Regional Geocaching Policies Wiki is a good place to start.  That is where the info that MNTA posted above, about NWR's, comes from.

 

https://wiki.Groundspeak.com/display/GEO/Washington#Washington-NationalWildlifeRefuges:

 

It would be great if all reviewer populate the Regional Wiki because where I live in Nova Scotia and before that in Québec (both province of Canada) that section is empty... 

[+cerberus1]

8 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

Several months later, someone placed a cache in the location which I was denied permission.

 

Similar, the other 2/3rds spent numerous  township meetings (for a park hide) before she was granted permission to place a simple cache in the only area the township would allow.

 -  Just a short time later, three more caches sprung up in areas the township didn't want hides.  All no permission.

The township was ticked off enough that we apologized and archived ours.

The hobby lost a couple more properties now completed to play on as well, because of a few jerks who thought "it's just a park".

[+hzoi]

8 hours ago, MNTA said:

 The US Fish & Wildlife Service has issued a blanket ban on all caches in NWRs. Physical caches placed in these locations will be rejected unless explicit permission is obtained.

 

Earthcaches and virtuals are more welcome, though.  I own two ECs on the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.  It took a couple weeks for the first one to get approved; second one was much quicker.  All it took was a phone call to the right person and a professional follow-up email with a print-to-PDF of the draft cache description.

[+K13]

21 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

I don't mean to discourage you, but here's my story:

I went to a LOT of trouble (TWICE), travelled to OKC to the county office that had the property records, printed off the information, and wrote a nice letter to the land owners asking if I could place a geocache there. They were nice enough to write back, and said NO, please don't put a geocache there. Okie dokie.

 

Several months later, someone placed a cache in the location which I was denied permission. I explained that to them, and posted a NA. Talk about ticked off! They were MAD as heck, and told me,  "I checked with the neighbors and they said it's OK, and  besides, NO ONE owns that property (about 4 acres).  No one owns it? No one? Not according to the county records! Anyway, I spoke with the reviewer who didn't care and let the cache stay.  That left me very discouraged from doing a lot of work to get permission. Now, if I can't ask the person directly or speak to someone from the business, I don't bother. I'm not going to go to all that work only to have the reviewer not care that we're ignoring the property owner's request.

 

 

I sure hope that reviewer is no longer volunteering his service.

[+StumblinMonk]

There is an app that I use for hunting called On X Hunt.  One of the map layers shows land owners.  When I downloaded it there was a 30 day trial, after that this part is a pay feature.  I only needed it to identify a few areas, figure out who to address the letter to and move on.  I forget what the fee is, but it was more than I thought I needed to spend.

[+justintim1999]

22 hours ago, hzoi said:

 

Earthcaches and virtuals are more welcome, though.  I own two ECs on the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.  It took a couple weeks for the first one to get approved; second one was much quicker.  All it took was a phone call to the right person and a professional follow-up email with a print-to-PDF of the draft cache description.

This is the route I'd go.   If you do receive permission and are dead set on placing a physical cache there, please take the time to understand and accept the limitations involved.   The idea of keeping the cache simple and within close proximity of a trail will go a long way toward protecting the natural habitat.   It will also win you points with the powers to be and possibly make hiding additional caches in that location possible.      Good luck.      

[+geo climber]

8 hours ago, StumblinMonk said:

There is an app that I use for hunting called On X Hunt.  One of the map layers shows land owners.  When I downloaded it there was a 30 day trial, after that this part is a pay feature.  I only needed it to identify a few areas, figure out who to address the letter to and move on.  I forget what the fee is, but it was more than I thought I needed to spend.

Yes, I like https://www.onxmaps.com/ and also https://www.gaiagps.com/. Both have a private land owners layer that shows the property borders and contact info for the land owners.

[+kunarion]

9 hours ago, StumblinMonk said:

There is an app that I use for hunting called On X Hunt.  One of the map layers shows land owners.  When I downloaded it there was a 30 day trial, after that this part is a pay feature.  I only needed it to identify a few areas, figure out who to address the letter to and move on.  I forget what the fee is, but it was more than I thought I needed to spend.

 

That's where I bought a Garmin GPS map card for the state of Georgia.  I can then see property lines, plus names of land owners, and it's easier to test hiding spot ideas in the wilds, especially in a saturated park.  "OnXHunt" has gone to a subscription format, but I see they still offer pre-loaded map cards.

 

Some places have "tax assessor's" pages with maps.  Mine used to have names, too.  Now just plot numbers.  But you can see park boundaries.

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by kunarion