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J. Scott Wood, Forest Archaeologist and Heritage Program Manager for Tonto National Forest today took a group of Geocachers on a tour of some of the archaeological sites within the Cave Creek Ranger District along the Seven Springs Road (FR24). He described methods of identifying sites, site etiquette, and the problems and challenges of managing such sites on public lands. He worked his way from the more obvious to some very subtle indicators of where sites are located. If this sounds familiar to those of you who have had site steward training, it's because we were given the same tour, and the same topics, although perhaps not to the level of depth that the stewards get.

We had a sunny but very windy day. It was chilly by comparison to some of our recent weather, but it was still a great day to be out in Tonto. Scott also prepared a special "virtual" cache for us. He gave us the coordinates for an archaeological site and challenged us to find it. Just to make things interesting, he gave us the coordinates as they use them in the Forest Service: UTM and NAD27! (Note to Garmin owners: If you ever have to change format and datum in your GPSr, make sure you change the format first and then change the datum. You can ask just about any Garmin owner who was there why you need to remember that.)

The Arizona Geocaching community is very fortunate to have someone like Scott at the Forest Service. Scott believes that the public owns the land and it's the Forest Service's job to manage it on behalf of the public. He recognizes the values of Geocaching and feels it's an ideal activity for National Forests. He doesn't think formal permission is required to place caches in Tonto, but as he said, "it can't hurt to stop in at the ranger station and let them know what you're doing." And he reiterated that caches do not belong in designated wilderness areas.

About the Mesa Ranger District confiscations and the reports that all caches in the ranger district would be confiscated: Scott told me and some of the other attendees that he "chased that all the way to Washington." There is nothing coming out of the USFS that prohibits Geocaching on Forest Service land in general. He is going to have a talk with the staff at the Mesa RD office and make sure that they are only removing caches in the Wilderness.