Every community has unique features that its citizens can be proud of— cultural heritage, historical sites, and natural wonders. May of these enriching elements can elude even life-long residents of an area. Experience the treasures of your community more deeply through quests— educational self-guided tours that utilize a map and poetic clues to teach participants about the history, biology, and/or cultural integrity of an area. Clues can be free verse, rhyming, or haikus, and can even include entertaining puzzles that questers fill in by making observations on a questing trail.

Past quests have led people around historic towns, through parks, into cemeteries, above waterfalls, and even into train stations and museums, among other places. At the end of a quest, participants find a cleverly hidden quest box— under a bridge, in a hollow tree stump, beneath a stone, or inside a mailbox. Quest boxes contain a quest logbook for each quester to document their visit and a unique hand-carved stamp for questers to collect in their own quest notebooks. Quest boxes may also contain answers to riddles and additional facts about the quest trail. 

Questing was created through the 150-year old tradition of “letterboxing” near Dartmoor National Park in England. Neighborhoods in the United States began to develop quests in the mid-1990s and began Valley Quest, a program to help develop questing programs in different communities. So far, quests have been created in several different states, including Maine, Maryland, New York, Ohio, and Oregon. 

As the director of the Valley Quest Program, Steven Glazer hosts training workshops, provides mentoring, and helps develop curriculum for new questing programs. Steven helped develop a questing program in 2010 at Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) in Ohio.  I had the pleasure of working alongside Arrye Rosser, Interpretive and Education Specialist, to launch this program.

During the spring and summer of 2010, over 100 volunteers helped to create and refine 22 quests at CVNP. My responsibilities included editing clues and turning them into rhyming format, piloting quests to ensure clues successfully led participants through a designated trail, creating maps, carving stamps, and drawing graphics for quests. Questing was one of the most rewarding projects I ever worked on. Seeing all the natural wonders of Cuyahoga Valley National Park for the first time while learning about the history and wildlife of each area enhanced my experience tremendously. During the CVNP quest pilot season of fall 2010, an estimated 350 individuals visited 650 quest boxes. The questing program in Ohio has continued to have great success since its inception.

Quests vary in difficulty, from the physical trail to the complexity of clues, and can be an enriching activity for individuals, friends, and families to experience. Some quests are even created specifically for families with children to enhance learning through exploration. Visit Steven’s website here to learn about how to develop a questing program in your community and to view existing quests in other states. 

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