This topic contains 7 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by 
darkins44 13 years, 5 months ago.
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Hello Everyone,
I am fairly new to the geocaching scene, my family and I have been doing it for a little bit now, and I am looking to place a few caches. My question to everyone is, where do I start? I know that placing a cache on public DNR managed land is alright if you get approval from the DNR Land Manager, but who do I contact if I wish to place a cache in a park, or boat landing in the county? I called the Rice Lake City Hall today, and I spoke with someone in the Park and Cemetery Maintenance Department, and they had no clue as to what Geocaching was. They said if I wish to ask a question, I would have to sign up and ask the board of directors at a meeting next month. (Makes me feel like I would be going to see the great and powerful Oz…) Is this really nessecery? Am I going to the wrong department? It seems that going before a board to ask to place a tiny microcache in a park or by a boat landing is a bit of overkill.Any and all replies to this post are greatly appriciated. Thank you for taking the time to read my question!
Our county and city don’t have ordinances against it and that’s where I would start if I was you (looking to see if it’s legal). Call the Sheriff or your city Police and ask. They probably won’t have a clue and that would indicate that there probably isn’t a law in place so you would be ok. You can call the local parks and rec and see if they have a policy about posting them in parks and what to do if they allow it. If you read the Geocaching.com rules about placement and make a few phone calls you should be ok. If you’re new to this the best thing you can do is get a few cache finds under your belt to see how people are doing it. If you’ve done that then go out and drive around or scope out a good spot on the map (or Google Earth), get your cache container ready and hit the trail to find a good place to hide it. If I find a wooded area in town and it’s not indicated as a park on the map I check with the city assessor to check the plat map and see who owns it. I just explained to them what I was doing and that I was making sure I was staying off private property and they have always been happy to help me. Our county (Douglas) has the plat maps online so you can see who owns property without leaving your house so yours might too if you are in a different one. Good luck and have fun!
I am working on placing my first few caches as well in Waukesha county. I looked at other caches in smiliar areas (same park) and contacted the person listed on those caches. For example: Dopp Street Cache #2 (GC1D1J6). You may also have to educate the people. Good luck.
STEMmom
Hello and welcome! First thing I’d do is go to geocaching.com and read everything you can on cache placement in general:
http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx
Then, the WGA site here has a great resource in their ‘information center’ regarding some specific Wisconsin centric guidelines for cache placement:
http://www.wi-geocaching.com/modules.php?name=Content
By the sounds of it you have a spot picked out on public property and the Rice Lake parks dept is clueless. You’re probably good to go as I doubt there is a local ordinance prohibiting the placement of caches. I have a few caches placed in Barron County and they are very lenient, in fact the Rice Lake area Chamber of Commerce helped me with some information while placing caches in the Blue Hills. Good luck and have fun!
I should add if you still have questions regarding placement at your spot after reading the materials I would contact local law enforcement first. If in the city of Rice Lake, the RL police dept., if outside of the city limits, the Barron County sherrif’s dept. The officers and deputys are on the front lines and are more apt to see geocachers and cache placements and would be most qualified to assist on what may or may not be a good idea in a cache placement.
There are currently caches in parks and at boat landings in Rice Lake and Barron County. I don’t recall there being any issues with any of them being removed by any Goverment Agency.
I used to have a cache in a county park and it vanished in the winter during some logging. Last I checked there were caches in 2 of the County Parks with campgrounds.
Rice Lake does not have an ordinance concerning geocaching and I am not aware of any ordinances that Barron County has.
I asked the Barron Co Forestry Dept once and they have no problem with caches on Barron County Forest property. You may want to contact StagerCrew as I believe they did submit something or speak to the City of Rice Lake before they placed their caches and did have to go through some hoops. We have caches in Cameron and Barron and have not had any problems with placements on public property. Enjoy seeing all the new caches! Wish they were closer to Barron so I could grab them on my lunch hour but I will definately come over with my family shortly!
From what I’ve seen Rice Lake and Barron county in general isn’t anti-geocache, I have one just north of Rice Lake & while it went missing once it’s been there over 2 years without incident. I’m sure a few dozen people have stopped in Rice Lake because of the geocaches there that wouldn’t have otherwise.
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