Earth Day Cleanup at Raccoon Creek Park

Earth Day Cleanup at Raccoon Creek Park (GCE2F1) took place on Saturday 26 April 2003, at Raccoon Creek State Park, in Pennsylvania (USA). Geocaching HQ counts it as the first Cache In Trash Out (CITO) in the history of geocaching.

CITO grew out of a habit already widespread among players: picking up the litter you come across along the way. In early 2003, as the game was about to turn three, Jeremy Irish, co-founder of Geocaching HQ, floated the idea on the geocaching forums and invited local groups to choose a park to clean up on that 26 April. In Pennsylvania, The Leprechauns (today a reviewer under the name Keystone) thought bigger: one team dedicated to collecting rubbish, another to clearing a hiking loop, a picnic, and four caches placed along the way with the agreement of the park management. Six pick-up trucks were filled. The move was political: geocachers in the state were then debating the permits needed to hide caches in parks, and the day won over the managers, who went on to issue permits.

The movement itself is a success: CITO now has its own event type on geocaching.com, and Geocaching HQ counts several tens of thousands of them around the world since Raccoon Creek.