Clearfield, PA – The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), Highway Safety Network and Visit Clearfield County gathered at the Clearfield Riverwalk amphitheater this morning to commemorate the opening of the Clearfield County Traffic Safety Geotrail. The geotrail is part of PennDOT’s and the Highway Safety Network’s efforts to reduce suspected serious injury and fatal highway crashes by educating drivers and changing their behavior. 

“PennDOT is just one of many stakeholders in Pennsylvania that supports the national movement entitled ‘Toward Zero Deaths,’” said PennDOT District Traffic Engineer Erik Brown. “Because of the monumental nature of this task, Pennsylvania takes a multi-faceted approach to highway safety that includes outreach and education. We are grateful to the Highway Safety Network and Visit Clearfield County for their hard work and creativity in creating this geotrail and look forward to seeing this new take on traffic safety education bring us closer to our goal of eliminating highway fatalities.”

According to geocaching.com, “geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices where participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and attempt to find the geocache hidden at that location.” The Clearfield County Traffic Safety Geotrail includes 20 geocache’s hidden throughout Clearfield County. Each geocache has a brochure on a different traffic safety focus area affixed to it, and each brochure includes a keyword that participants record in their passport booklet. Participants who visit each geocache and record all 20 keywords receive a reward coin for completing the trail.

The idea of combining geocaching with traffic safety messaging is one born out of the adversity faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, explained Highway Safety Network Community Traffic Safety Project Coordinator Josh Woods. With more traditional outreach and education efforts either not possible or not practical during the height of mitigation efforts, Woods was forced to think outside the box when developing programs. He spoke of the difficulty he was experiencing with Josiah Jones, a longtime friend and executive director of Visit Clearfield County. During that conversation, Jones mentioned that the executive board for Visit Clearfield County was eager to add to its existing network of geotrails, and the pair decided it was an excellent opportunity for a partnership between their organizations.

The first step was identifying potential locations and selecting traffic safety focus areas appropriate for those locations. That process, along with securing the permission of landowners in question, took place over the winter months. Upon completion, Woods and the Visit Clearfield County Geocache Committee scheduled a date to place the geocaches and upload coordinates and descriptions to geocaching.com. The trail opened at 10:00 AM today. Passport booklets are available at the Visit Clearfield County office located at 208 Plaza Drive in Clearfield, which is open 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM Monday through Friday.

No taxpayer dollars were spent to purchase the materials for the geotrail. The passport booklets, reward coins and geocache boxes purchased for this trail were paid for with grant funding obtained through State Farm Insurance’s Good Neighbor Citizenship Company Grants. State Farm awards these grants to build safer, stronger, and better educated communities across the United States by focusing on safety, education, and community development.

“State Farm was happy to provide support to such a wonderful project,” said agent Keith Folmar (Phillipsburg). “At State Farm, promoting safety for the members of the communities we live in and serve is a priority because we want to help everyone live more confidently. We appreciate the partnership with the Highway Safety Network, PennDOT, and Visit Clearfield County for bringing the public such a unique project to enjoy beautiful sites in Clearfield County while learning about traffic safety concepts that will protect them in their day to day lives.”  

For more information on Geocaching, visit www.Geocaching.com. For more information on Visit Clearfield County and their network of geotrails, visit https://www.visitclearfieldcounty.org/. For more information on State Farm’s Good Neighbor Citizenship Company Grants, visit www.StateFarm.com.

For more information on PennDOT’s highway safety initiatives, visit www.PennDOT.gov/Safety.

For regional traffic updates, follow www.twitter.com/511PAAltoona, www.twitter.com/511PAErie, www.twitter.com/511PAStateCOLL. 

MEDIA CONTACT:  Timothy Nebgen, 814-765-0598 or 814-360-3838

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