Counties on maps

[+Steve77450]

How about putting county names and outlines on the geocaching maps.  There are so many challenges now that are county related or county specific that knowing where the county lines are is becoming quite important.

[+fuzziebear3]

The geocaching.com map doesn't do this, but project-gc.com has tools that can help you with county challenges, including maps and selecting needed caches.

 

[+egroeg]

Switch to the "OpenStreetMap Default" map instead of the "Geocaching" setting.  It has county boundaries on it.

[+JustFindingOurWay]

The Esri World TopoMap on the Geocaching "Browse" map also shows US county lines. I'm not sure if it does the same for other countries since I do most of my county trip planning with Project-GC and Cachetur. 

[+SpiritGuide]

Geooh GO for Android has county boundary lines AND names on the map. Also tracks finds and shades those counties. Even if you turn off boundaries, selecting a cache or pressing on a map location displays the county for it.

[+terratin]

15 hours ago, fuzziebear3 said:

The geocaching.com map doesn't do this, but project-gc.com has tools that can help you with county challenges, including maps and selecting needed caches.

 

 

Yep, but only for premium members of Project-gc I think. It's something I use a lot.

[Blue Square Thing]

12 hours ago, terratin said:

 

Yep, but only for premium members of Project-gc I think. It's something I use a lot.

 

You could also search on counties on the map at Project GC of course. The paid one is quicker and more visual, sure, but the Map Compare tool is powerful - although it helps a bit if you know where the counties are within a region I guess.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

On 1/19/2021 at 4:18 PM, egroeg said:

Switch to the "OpenStreetMap Default" map instead of the "Geocaching" setting.  It has county boundaries on it.

 

Keep in mind however, that the data for each geocache does not contain the county in which it's located (and of course, a lot of countries don't *have* counties).   Sites like project-gc will derive the county name from the lat/long coordinates using an external service.  While you may be able to see county lines on a map you would not be able to search for a list of caches in a specific county.

[+egroeg]

On 1/19/2021 at 4:18 PM, egroeg said:

Switch to the "OpenStreetMap Default" map instead of the "Geocaching" setting.  It has county boundaries on it.

 

2 minutes ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

 

Keep in mind however, that the data for each geocache does not contain the county in which it's located (and of course, a lot of countries don't *have* counties).   Sites like project-gc will derive the county name from the lat/long coordinates using an external service.  While you may be able to see county lines on a map you would not be able to search for a list of caches in a specific county.

 

These are just different options for the same process.

When I planned a quick cache run with the goal of scoring several new counties, I used the OpenStreetMap feature to follow a route and could see in which counties the caches along that route lived.  If you have the time to travel anywhere in a county, then a list of the most interesting caches might be more useful.

Just depends on how you plan to cache on that day.

[+Vooruit!]

On 1/21/2021 at 1:00 AM, NYPaddleCacher said:

 

Keep in mind however, that the data for each geocache does not contain the county in which it's located (and of course, a lot of countries don't *have* counties).   Sites like project-gc will derive the county name from the lat/long coordinates using an external service.  While you may be able to see county lines on a map you would not be able to search for a list of caches in a specific county.

Actually, you can, by using Map Compare, choosing only yourself, and tick 'None found'. This is actually my most used feature of PGC.

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 1/20/2021 at 7:00 PM, NYPaddleCacher said:

Sites like project-gc will derive the county name from the lat/long coordinates using an external service.  While you may be able to see county lines on a map you would not be able to search for a list of caches in a specific county.

 

GSAK can populate County info as well.

 

Sometimes there are caches that will confound such services, usually due to be right on a county line or worse a state line.

 

For example, in building a Florida database I found a cache on the FL-AL line which GSAK would not locate in any county. The cache is listed in FL (defined by the CO) but it the coordinates put it just over the line into AL. (I gave the CO a polite heads up.)

[+NYPaddleCacher]

7 hours ago, Vooruit! said:

Actually, you can, by using Map Compare, choosing only yourself, and tick 'None found'. This is actually my most used feature of PGC.

 

I was talking specifically about the maps on the geocaching.com site (and the OpenStreetMap Default map specifically).    The Groundspeak database doesn't maintain county information for any caches and doesn't get data from PGC either.  

 

PGC and GSAK can populate county info because they use external services that return place names given a set of lat/long coordinates.  Those services return a hierarchy of place names from the country level, then a second level (state/province/territory), then a third level (a county in the U.S.) and if relevant a city.   It's been a really long time since I used the cache submission form but the CO just selects a "State" name from a list and doesn't validate if the lat/long coordinates are in that state.  There is no place for a CO to enter in a county and the Groundspeak doesn't derive a county name and store it anywhere from the lat/long coordinates.

[+barefootjeff]

11 minutes ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

It's been a really long time since I used the cache submission form but the CO just selects a "State" name from a list and doesn't validate if the lat/long coordinates are in that state.  There is no place for a CO to enter in a county and the Groundspeak doesn't derive a county name and store it anywhere from the lat/long coordinates.

 

Currently, the cache submission form auto-fills the country and state information based on the entered coordinates. Both those fields are subsequently editable on unpublished and published hides.

 

4 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Sometimes there are caches that will confound such services, usually due to be right on a county line or worse a state line.

 

For example, in building a Florida database I found a cache on the FL-AL line which GSAK would not locate in any county. The cache is listed in FL (defined by the CO) but it the coordinates put it just over the line into AL. (I gave the CO a polite heads up.)

 

I can imagine a situation where a multi or puzzle has its listed coordinates on one side of a boundary but the actual cache is on the other. There's a bunch of recent puzzles near here that have the bogus coordinates in the Hawkesbury River and show up on Project-GC as Central Coast but the finals (or at least the ones I've solved so far) have been on the southern bank in Hornsby Shire. If that happened close to a state border, the CO might manually set the state to be the side the actual cache is on even though the listed bogus coordinates (or first stage of a multi) were on the other side.

[+Harry Dolphin]

14 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

 

GSAK can populate County info as well.

 

Sometimes there are caches that will confound such services, usually due to be right on a county line or worse a state line.

 

For example, in building a Florida database I found a cache on the FL-AL line which GSAK would not locate in any county. The cache is listed in FL (defined by the CO) but it the coordinates put it just over the line into AL. (I gave the CO a polite heads up.)

 

I run my pocket queries for a 65 mile radius.  I use the GSAK County Macro, because I am not generally interested in caches in counties east of the Hudson River.  There are a few caches where the county does not fill in.  I think they are on county lines.

I had a GeoArt series of a Dolphin in the River.  The Hudson River.  The caches were all in New Jersey, but I used the state where the mystery icon appeared.  The New York Reviewer was not happy, because s/he was not aware of the New Jersey requirements, and referred those to the New Jersey Reviewer for approval.