Captain John Smith Geotrail
Set to begin June 4, 2011!!



With the success of the Star-Spangled Banner Geotrail, the Chesapeake Conservancy, the National Park Service and the Maryland Geocaching Society are pleased to announce the Captain John Smith Geotrail!

The new trail will launch on Saturday, June 4, 2011, and everyone is invited to join us for an exciting kick-off event (listing to be published soon) on the property of the Accokeek Foundation, National Colonial Farm. http://accokeekfoundation.org/

Be sure to save the date and stay tuned for more details!

Here is a little taste of what you will discover along the Captain John Smith Geotrail......

Are you ready to follow in the wake of Captain John Smith? Visit sites along the National Historic Trail and learn about the native cultures and the natural environment of the 17th-century Chesapeake through the Captain John Smith Chesapeake Geotrail. The Trail provides opportunities for you to experience the Bay through the routes and places associated with Smith’s explorations. Caches will be located in museums, refuges, parks, and towns in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware along the rivers and creeks that Smith and his crew explored four centuries ago.

Over four hundred years ago, Englishman John Smith and a small crew set out in an open boat to explore the Chesapeake Bay. Between 1607 and 1609 Smith mapped and documented nearly 3,000 miles of the Bay and its rivers. Along the way he visited many thriving American Indians communities and gathered information about this “fruitful and delightsome land.” In December 2006 the U.S. Congress designated the routes of Smith’s explorations of the Chesapeake as a national historic trail—the first national water trail.

Additional Resources:
http://www.nps.gov/cajo/index.htm
http://www.smithtrail.net

Awesome! I was just there two weeks ago with my daughters and I was wondering why there wasn't a cache there.... now I have an excuse to go back!

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Nice!

Excellent! I was hoping for another geotrail this summer!

Great. I heard about the trail when I got my coin for the SSB. Just finished up the MML trail and I am about to tackle the Park Ranger trail. Thanks MGS for fueling my addiction of trails.

When are you looking at doing the event(date/time)? Lots of events around that date: WWFM (4th) and MAGC (5th)

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What a perfect way to celebrate National Trails Day! We are really looking forward to doing this trail, finishing it will be our caching goal for the summer. Thanks for the heads up on the launch date, we have put it on the calendar.

Another round of applause goes to Mrs. B for designing a beautiful banner ad for the Captain John Smith Geotrail. She is truly a talented artist! Her ad design began running today on Geocaching.com so be on the look-out for it!


The ad will click through to the official website for the trail. http://www.smithtrail.net/things-to-do/go-geocaching/

Beginning next week you will be able to learn more about the trail through the site. But to give you a sneak peak….

The Captain John Smith Geotrail will highlight the explorations of Capt. Smith and his travels on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary’s. The trail will have over 40 caches within Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. The trail will focus on 5 rivers; the Susquehanna, Potomac, Nanticoke, Rappahannock, and James (including the Chickahominy branch).

Cachers will be required to find, log and post a pic at 15 CJS caches to earn the coin. By the way, another fine Mrs. B coin design!

Come show your support to the National Park Service and join us for the kick-off event on Saturday, June 4 at the National Colonial Farm GC2F414. We will have printed copies of the passport, a list of CJS caches and a chance to win some nice door prizes!

The National Park Service has gone the extra mile by preparing a history write-up for every cache location and for obtaining permission to place caches at untouched/uncached locations. Each cache page will include a special history piece to give cachers an idea of what they will discover at the cache site. I have to admit, I have learned a great deal working on this project and am amazed by the history. Truly fascinating!

Below is a sample of some wonderful history you will discover along the Captain John Smith Geotrail! Enjoy.

A recently unveiled wayside exhibit interprets the connection between the river, the Chickahominy tribe, and the English colonists. The Chickahominy were powerful enough to remain independent of Powhatan’s paramount chieftaincy until after the arrival of the English. The cypress trees in the swamps provided lightweight, rot-resistant wood for dugout canoes. They skillfully harvested plants such as wild rice as well as fish, birds and mammals from the “breadbasket” marshes in the river’s many meanders, as well as hunting and gathering on land, to supplement their agricultural production of corn, beans, squash, melons, tobacco, and other crops. They traded corn with John Smith when he sought to keep the colonists from starvation, contributing to the survival of the Jamestown colony and later taught the colonists some of their agricultural practices.

As the settlers began to prosper and expand their settlements, the Chickahominy were crowded out of their homeland. In the treaty of 1646, the tribe was granted reservation land in the Pamunkey Neck area of Virginia, near where the Mattaponi reservation now exists in King William County. Eventually, the tribe lost its reservation land, and the tribal families began a gradual migration to the area called the Chickahominy Ridge, where they now reside.

Today, the Chickahominy tribe consists of approximately 840 people who live within a five-mile radius of each other and the tribal center. Several hundred more live in other parts of the United States. The tribe was granted official recognition by the state of Virginia in 1983 and has been working towards recognition by the federal government since 1996. Current tribal lands of about 110 acres are in the tribe's traditional territory, present-day Charles City County. The tribal center on the land is the location of an annual Powwow and Fall Festival.

Just 1 week till the launch of the Captain John Smith Geotrail!
Visit http://www.smithtrail.net/things-to-do/go-geocaching/ to download a copy of the passport. Or, you can pick up a printed copy at the event.

The Accokeek Foundation has planned a few special children's activities including crafts, making art with food, coloring and much more. The National Colonial Farm area of the park will be open for our event. This will give folks the opportunity to tour the historic colonial farm house and animal barnyard.

Stay tuned to the smithtrail.net website for a special announcement for a CJS photo contest. Be sure to carry your camera along the CJS trail and take those pictures! Prizes will be awarded in 3 categories: Scenic, Wildlife, and Historic.

Also, one CJS cache in each state (MD, VA & DE) will have a beautiful replica ceramic buoy marker as an FTF prize. If you find this special prize, you will receive a CJS prize pack which includes an NPS Captain John Smith shirt, hat and more.

Hope to see you all on June 4th!

The Bay Blog's Matt Rath wrote a wonderful blog about the CJS Geotrail and he posted the photos he took at the Accokeek Foundation. Thanks to spikep and K9 Geep for their help teaching Matt to cache. The little Zombies and Geep did a great job
Here's the link: http://blog.chesapeakebay.net/category/Photo-Tour.aspx

Excellent article and I love all the pics! A huge thanks to the Bocco & Spikep families for meeting with the reporters!

The Bay Weekly released an article yesterday. Lil Crab had a fun time teaching geocaching to the reporters daughter.
http://bayweekly.com/articles/good-living/article/treasure-hunting

Great articles. Good to see everyone enjoying their play time and sharing it with others.

This looks like a great geotrail! I wasn't able to make the event yesterday (kayaking class) but I printed out the passport. I am not finding a list of caches anywhere or coming up with anything on the search. Where do I find a list or is it not public yet?

Thanks in advance!
Emily

Dr.MD has a bookmark list:
http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.aspx?guid=13560dd3-7ce8-4f32-8aca-8f71d315cf6d

Attached is a pdf of the CJS passport.

Loved the article...so much fun to see Logan teaching an 8 year old how to use the gps -- how cool is that. Great event, too. I had so much fun finding the caches and seeing every one. And then going out the next day to find more. Can't wait to find more CJS caches -- so far, they have all been terrific.

This is a great trail! We are really enjoying completing it. Is there a map that shows the cache locations in total? I have the Bookmark and the Passport, but want to see an overview map to plan our trips. Thanks for any help!

If your a Premium Member you can run a pocket query from the bookmark and load that file into different mapping programs, such as Mapsource and Google Earth. Here's an overview of the location of the caches. Sorry no cache names. If you need more detail, let us know what if any software you use and I'm sure some one can help.

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Jeff

Does anybody know if any geocoins are still available for the John Smith trail?

Sorry for the slow reply. We were out of town and then lost power to Irene.
Yes, there are coins still available for the Capt. John Smith & Star-Spangled Banner geotrail! Feel free to send me a pm or email if you have any questions.

Thanks!
Sue