Linn Parks Challenge

About the Program

Category: Parks and Recreation (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

As school was getting out in June of 2014, Linn County Conservation launched our first ever geocaching campaign designed to use young peoples’ love of technology to get them into the great outdoors, instead of letting it keep them inside all summer and we heavily promoted the campaign on cable TV and radio. The Linn Parks Challenge advertising directed people to find 25 caches hidden in 25 Linn county parks, preserves and historic sites. If they made it to all 25 spots they’d qualify for a free souvenir medallion. People were directed to go to www.linnparkschallenge.org to download the free app onto their smartphone. A “passport” was printed out which included the name and general location of each area where a cache was hidden, providing a way to prove that they’d been to each spot by doing a rubbing on it of a secret word. While the promotion of the challenge was going on last summer, we were getting 50-200 new visitors a day to the website. The most time was spent on the download page so that they could get the free app that they needed to get started. To date, we have already given out more than 150 coins, and thousands of people have done at least part of the challenge. They can continue to work on this year as well, as the campaign is ongoing.