GPS Treasure Hunt Draws Tourists

While most people probably haven’t heard about it, the treasure-hunting game of geocaching is quietly and steadily bringing tourists to Carroll County, and they’re bringing their wallets with them.

The official website for the game, www.geocaching.com, describes it as “a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online.” Anyone anywhere can hide a geocache, which can be any kind of weather-proof container that’s filled with inexpensive goodies, like pencils or small toys. The person who hid the geocache then goes online to the website and enters the GPS coordinators of that particular cache, and then it’s up to the treasure hunters to put their sleuthing skills to work.

Hunters find the caches by employing GPS systems of their own, tracking the coordinates until they find what they’re looking for. When they find a cache, the hunters sign a registry contained in the cache, and then they go back to the website to describe their experience.

Because search areas for the caches are not defined by county borders, it’s unclear how many caches are located in Carroll County, though it’s somewhere between 80 and 100. This is enough to keep even the most avid treasure hunter busy for several days, said Jonathan Dorsey, head of the Carrollton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and that’s exactly the goal.

“The reason it’s so valuable to us is that they physically have to come here. It’s not something that can be done virtually. Of course, the very definition of tourism is someone coming from  outside of your area to inside your area long enough to spend some money and leave,” Dorsey said. “And they come from close by, and they come from far off. They come from all over.”

It’s estimated that overnight visitors spend $100 a day on meals and lodging. This adds up quickly, Dorsey said, pumping significant amounts of money into the local economy, and the great thing about geocaching is that it exposes visitors to parts of the county that they would have never seen otherwise. They see something they like, and they come back again and again.

“There are caches at Mcintosh and Tanner Park and Bowdon Junction and Roopville,” Dorsey said. “The thing with a cache, it can more or less be anywhere, and it gives people a chance to come out and explore Carroll County.”