This is a pretty good idea. Joshua Noble, director of tourism at the Kingman (Ariz.) Chamber of Commerce, has created dozens of geocaches around the city to help attract visitors, reported the Kingman Daily Miner.
And it sounds like the project will expand well beyond Kingman’s borders …
Over the last several weeks, Noble said he’s been working with Shannon Rossiter at the Mohave Museum of History and Arts to obtain historic photographs of the city. His plan is to find the modern-day locations featured in those photographs, then place the historic photo inside a small tin geocache box at the site and upload the coordinates.
“If you think about when you drive on Route 66, it’s a lot like driving through a museum,” Noble said.
“This allows you to be interactive. It allows you to get out of the car, walk down an old roadbed or walk up to an old gas station, or some other area that used to be vibrant and full of life, and then you’re interacting with our museum displays.”
Noble also hopes to work with the local business community in promoting a downtown walking tour for geocachers. Additionally, he wants to start placing geocaches highlighting various hiking sites in the Cerbat Recreation Area and Hualapai Mountains.
“But aside from that, this is bigger than just Kingman,” Noble said. “We can work with other communities on Route 66 to increase the number of caches that are all along the route. Peach Springs is interested already, as well as Keepers of the Wild, Grand Canyon Caverns and Seligman.”
A quick search of Kingman’s ZIP code on the geocaching.com site reveals at least 150 geocaches there. A geocaching map shows that you could spend weeks tracking everything down. Noble’s stuff is listed as NobleRT66.
(Hat tip: Jim Hinckley)