land ownership issue

WGA Member Joined: 2007-09-11 Posts: 453

Ok I know that the reviewers are not directly part of the WGA, but that the two Wisconsin reviewers are both active in the WGA so this may or may not be the proper spot for this suggestion.

Is there some way to ask a reviewer I want to put a cache at location X and the reviewer would be able to tell you who the applicable land manager(s) would be for the desired location and also if there are any legs of a multi or puzzle that you may have a proximity issue with?

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:06 pm

They do that because for my newest cache I asked if the coord's were okay and found out it was actually private property. So I moved it to public property and it was published

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 7:32 am

I actually thought there was a posting in the past that asked if the group was interested in having a forum section devoted to "ask a reviewer" or something like that. Mostly a cache placing forum.

Don't know what ever came of it but I guess not much since there's no section.

Wis Kid has always been helpful to me. ..no disrespect to the missus reviewer... I just don't get to work with her much Smile

Not sure what's going on in your specific case but our reviewers are geocachers too. They are volunteers and they are both members of the WGA. I think they want you to succeed at placing caches and maintaining caches for everyone to go out and find. I could be wrong here but I hope I'm not! Smile

Good luck on your current issues. Try not to get too discouraged. (I know it's easy to...) Keep on placing them as that's what keeps the game going...

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 7:33 am

I have occasionally asked a reviewer for assist in figuring out who owns land, and I think they are quite willing to help. But obviously, if we all did that all the time, it would get a bit overwhelming for them.

If ownership is not obvious, it is often possible to check a plat map for this info. Since Plat maps are quite expensive, and I am cheap, I just go down to the local Shield's Sports store, which stocks several different counties of plat maps, and look it up while standing in the store. I would guess Gander Mountain has plat maps too, though I generally go to Shields.

So that may help in rural areas, though probably not so helpful in very urban areas.

z

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:57 pm

I'm not sure about other counties, But do know thay both Sawyer & Washburn have Plat maps for viewing on a wall in the court house. DNR offices also have plat books. You can also go the the county websites. I think most have some sort of maping function. The one I have worked with break it down by layers. Washburn braeks it down by, County forest, State/DNR and Federal lands.

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 10:40 pm

http://www.co.outagamie.wi.us/OutagamieCoWi/default.htm

Here's Outagamie's mapping.

Joined: 2002-02-18 Posts: 3399 Location: West Allis, Wi

When I was a reviewer, I used the DNR's interactive GIS website to determine state lands.

Here is the link: http://dnrmaps.wisconsin.gov/imf/imf.jsp?site=mgdlands

I never had access to private property ownership records. I just needed to determine if a cache was on State land, and if so, it required a permit.

I would love to find a internet resource for private land info, but I've never found one.

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 9:04 am

Another On-Line Mapping Source

WGA Member Joined: 2006-12-23 Posts: 5958

Maybe it would help if there was a sticky posted here with what exactly the reviewers have to go through when publishing a cache. Such as:

Step 1: Read description
Step 2: Does the description fit the cache type(trad,mult,puz,etc)
Step 3: Check location on xyz.com for land ownership.
Step 4: Can I actually solve the puzzle?

etc...

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:27 pm

The best way to do this is to create a cache page with the location in question, which makes it much easier for us to check proximity and map the location, UNCHECKING THE BOX indicating the cache is ready to be reviewed. Then just email us and ask one of us to look at it. We can usually check for DNR ownership, SNA locations, Milwaukee/Dane/Waushara county parks, City of Madison parks, private/public property, etc.

I do use the SE Wisconsin Regional Land Planning site mentioned above, but another nice site for non SE Wisconsin is Wisconsin Mapping Sites. Most counties in Wisconsin have excellent GIS sites which provide property ownership, easement locations, police and fire stations, and lots of other stuff. There are few counties either have nothing (Dodge) or very weak (LaCrosse, Winnebago) GIS sites. The city of Milwaukee has a decent site, but the rest of Milwaukee County is pretty much not covered.

On a similar note, the DNR site that Brian mentioned above is great for establishing DNR ownership, but is not complete for finding state natural areas. Recently, the DNR created a new site for mapping the SNAs. This is a huge improvement of the old "map from hell" (a phrase coined by Jeff Thorson), which required us to do a lot of guessing and comparison with topo maps.