In Greene County, we recently underwent a drastic change in the
requirements for boxes.
In the last week of August, the park system sent out notices to
geocachers/letterboxers they knew of, telling them they had to get
their boxes out of the parks by 1 September. Since I had previously
led the park rangers to each of my boxes, they had my name, address,
and knew where all my boxes were. I complied with their
requirement.
They have a registration system now in place for each box. Here are
the requirements:
- Before a box is put out the site has to be registered with them and
approved.
- The box can not be an ammo box
- The box can not be more than 20 feet from a trail
- The box must be checked monthly by the placer
- The box must be moved and re-registered each December 31st.
Most of these requirements are based on a system which a park system
in northern Ohio put into place last year. They seem to be heavily
based on geocaching, and large numbers of people coming to a box.
When I mentioned that my geocaches attract about 50 logged visits a
year and my boxes attract 1-10 visits per year, the ranger seemed
possibly interested in deleting the move every Dec 31 requirement.
We are to talk about this in November.
There is an implied threat that any box not removed in the original
announcement will be dealt with as abandoned property and the person
who left it could be cited.
It remains to be seen whether the Hamilton County move is part of a
parallel process.
What I am doing here in Dayton: I moved all my Geocaches out of the
Greene County Parks. (It seems very hard to hide a geocache within
20 feet of a trail and not have it looted.) I will put several
letterboxes back in, but have not yet applied for the privledge.
The state parks still seem open to letterboxing.