And don't forget Stone Mountain Park in Georgia

Last time I checked these are the statistics for Andover MA (but I may be a bit off since I haven't checked recently)

I got you BOTH beat!

Region	Boxes	Sq Miles	Boxes/Sq Mile
The scrubby bush near the school	1	0.0000003587006	2787840.3

Woohoo!! That bush is a letterbox MECCA!!!!

Ok all you bait danglers! I really want to visit all those places and am so excited to be living in a more centrally located state to do so. I never thought that FL had less boxes than TN though!

Woohoo!! That bush is a letterbox MECCA!!!!

We really need a ROFLMAO button.

People in Conneticut must have boxes oozing out of every crevice

i was told you could throw a cat and it would land on a box in CT.

takes the size of a state versus the number of boxes planted into consideration

Try the state size of Alaska vs ANY other state. *rasberry tongue* lol. But now thanx to all those that visit this huge state (AK cruiseship shoutout) we have lots more boxes than when AlaskaHomeSchoolMommy was doing ALL the planting.

deniserows
and whines again about AK being a LBing desert

WOOT WOOT !
Alaska's not last. Why am i complaining? *sheesh*

deniserows
to North Dakota to help them out

How would you compare Connecticut to, say, Arizona, which has gobs of square miles but not a lot in the way of hiding places per square mile? Or even worse, Alaska?

Perhaps a better idea would be to compare the number of square miles of parks and public lands within a state vs the number of boxes. Still wouldn't mean much; Alaska has gobs of public lands but they're still mostly desolate, coupla boxes per square mile wouldn't make much sense. We here in Florida have the Everglades and, trust me on this, you wouldn't want to be hunting letterboxes out in the middle of it.

OK, how about this idea: Compare the number of state and national parks to the number of letterboxes. Irregardless of size. The Everglades vs. the little one-square-block park surrounding a natural spring, each count as one. With any luck at all, most states will have more boxes than state and national parks -- after all, some boxes aren't planted in parks -- but the resulting coefficent might actually have some meaning.

Perhaps a better idea would be to compare the number of square miles of parks and public lands within a state vs the number of boxes.

Or compare the number of boxes to the population of a given state. =)

-- Ryan

YGBSM! Alaska beat out North Dakota? Amazing.

Of course this is not all boxes... :-)

The thing that really hurts is that it's probably not even close to all boxes in Connecticut. They're big time into LbNA up that way, aren't they?

Florida ranks poorly. I guess I expected that. Part of the problem is that, as soon as we start building a healthy collection of available boxes, a hurricane comes along and washes them all away. That's happened a couple of times since letterboxing got started in the US. Wilma was especially bad, apparently wiped out so many boxes in central Florida that nobody would bother looking for any boxes until someone had confirmed which ones were still in place. It doesn't help that most of our public parks and recreation areas are in flood-prone zones -- which is deliberate, that's the only way we can keep the morons from building houses there.

Me, I'm not helping. These days I'm shipping more of my stamps away to be planted in other states than I'm planting here in FL.

33 per square mile? Not including the mysteries? You guys have gone nuts. That's like, one every 150 feet in every direction, isn't it? And IIRC, some parts of SMP are inaccessible?

Dangling bait in MA :-)

I suppose piling a lot of letterboxes on top of each other would be considered "dangling bait" to some boxers, but it just tells me to go elsewhere. You guys should take up geocaching.

I am not doubting your total of 194 but using a search on AQ gives a MUCH lower total for Harold Parker State Forest. (Using only the park name and a zero radius search, just like I did for Stone Mountain Park).

And let's be honest, you don't need to dangle too much bait in the northeast for people. :>

And IIRC, some parts of SMP are inaccessible?

SHHH! I don't think anyone in GA or anyone who has truly boxed SMP is aware of this!

Roo, you are awesome! And HEY who are the ND resident LBers? I think they need some help. Let's have an intervention and send some boxes up there to be planted and then let them plan a fabulous event so we can all visit next year and find them!!!!! I know that folks in SD and IA would appreciate the finds too! <3 :)

I am not doubting your total of 194 but using a search on AQ gives a MUCH lower total for Harold Parker State Forest. (Using only the park name and a zero radius search, just like I did for Stone Mountain Park).

There are MANY more boxes. The confusion may be in the fact that the park is really in several towns. You only have boxes in North Andover. I believe the majority of the boxes in the park are listed in Andover. I haven't quite figured out how to get a proper list of Harold Parker boxes on AQ given the varied ways people list the location and hence my list also includes some on LbNA.

Technically I didn't pick North Andover, I just searched for boxes that have a location of Harold Parker State Forest and AQ puts in the town so any box with that listed should have been changed by AQ to the town. But if people just say Andover and note the park in the clues, that would explain the difference.

Yeah there are a lot but I would guesstimate that more than half are NOT easy to find since you have no idea in the park. They are not heavily concentrated except on/around the walkup trail. And theoretically the lakes and face of the mountain are inaccessible (plus there are golf courses where boxes can be planted but retrieval is seasonal at best) so that is probably a couple hundred acres total.

I am not doubting your total of 194 but using a search on AQ gives a MUCH lower total for Harold Parker State Park

This brings up an interesting point. People don't always record location the same way and certainly have not been consistent at this particular park. Here are just some of the ways you can search for boxes listed in this park on AQ.

Harold Parker State Forest, Andover
Sudden Pond, Andover
Harold Parker State Forest, North Andover
Berry Pond, North Andover
Salem Pond, Andover

These lists include 177 boxes or 43 listings ... probably a better number to go with to compare with Eidolon's count at Stone Mountain.

roo (who loves numbers and statistics :-) )

33 per square mile? .... That's like, one every 150 feet in every direction, isn't it?

A square mile is 27,878,400 square feet. That sounds like a lot of space......

But whatever the numbers, you don't just stroll along picking up boxes.

WOOT WOOT !
Alaska's not last.

And that's without looking at other countries!

Australia: 49 in 2,941,299 = .000017 -- and, silly me, I went there on a boxing vacation! (found 7)

P.S.

New Zealand: 165 boxes in 103,483 square miles = .00159. We are better than 11 States!!!! -- and I planted about half of them....

I suppose piling a lot of letterboxes on top of each other would be considered "dangling bait" to some boxers

they're not actually on top of each other in Harold Parker. There's some pretty good hikes in there. i would put in a plug for a vacation there - or better yet, come on out for "Ship of Fools" next July. HPSF is a great place to hang and box. Great terrain, good hikes, and yeah, a bunch o' boxes spread pretty evenly throughout the park. Yeah, it's a little congested around Sudden Pond, but the rest of the park is pretty widespread and FUN.

~tigs

That settles it! When I retire, I'm moving to Connecticut!

That was a lot of work, roo! Thanks for the effort!

Kelsung

I found that box in the scrubby bush by the school. One of my first. :)