Help: History of Letterboxing
Help Home > History of Letterboxing
How has letterboxing changed over the years?
- 1854 James Perrot left a calling card in a glass bottle at Cranmere Pool, Dartmoor and invited friends to find it.
- 1888 A small tin box replaced the original bottle. Visitors left self-addressed postcards. The next person to visit the letterbox (except if it was a same-day visitor) would retrieve the postcards and mail them back from their hometown. And so the activity gets named "Letterboxing".
- 1976 Tom Gant created a guide map pinpointing the fifteen letterboxes in existence, at which point letterboxing began to boom in a big way.
- 1980s Commercial rubber stamps and a notebook are used instead of calling cards or postcards. Clues are published in a clue catalogue or by Word of Mouth (WOM).
- 1998 Smithsonian publishes an article called "They Live and Breathe Letterboxing"
- 1998 Letterboxing North America, the original source of online letterbox clues, is born.
- 1998 April 30. Prayer Rock, Vermont is believed to be the first letterbox planted in the United States
- 2001 Feb 21. Probably Canada's first letterbox: Beaver Mountain Provincial Park Letterbox, Nova Scotia, Canada (Antigonish) Adopted by Jiggs in 2006
- 2002 March 16. First postal letterbox.
- 2003 LB hiders can post and maintain their own clues on the LbNA site.
- 2004 The Atlas Quest letterboxing website is born!
History of Letterboxing (AQ)
Cranmere Day (AQ)
First State Letterboxes (Mark & Sue)
A Short History of Letterboxing on Dartmoor (Silent Doug)
Help Home > History of Letterboxing