Project A.P.E. - Mission #1: Devil's Spoon

GCA4B Mission 1: Devil’s Spoon was hidden on May 24, 2001, outside the small town of Diablo, California. It was first claimed as “Found” in an online post on May 25, 2001, by geocacher Buxley, who recovered the movie prop and took two pictures on the camera left in the cache.
 
Between May 25 and June 11, 2001, the geocache gained seven more online “Found” posts by geocachers. On June 30, 2001, however, the cache received its first “Did Not Find” (DNF) posted by geocacher kimbo, who wrote in their online log, "Couldn't find the cache! Searched the area of the coordinates for over an hour and came up empty. Is the cache that well hidden?"
 
On July 1, 2001, geocacher czechcachers also posted a DNF online log, "Fun hike, but no success finding the cache. We searched with a party of 9 for about 30 minutes with no luck. Is this one gone?"
 
A day later, on July 2, 2001, cache owner projectAPE posted a note log confirming that the geocache had gone missing. The cache page had an ‘ALERT! This cache no longer exists.’ banner warning placed on it, and in the latter half of 2006 the listing page was locked to prevent new logs from being posted. The cache was never officially archived, which wasn’t a feature of Geocaching.com until 2004.
 
The Mission 1 Project A.P.E. cache received a total of 8 online “Found” logs in the short time it was active (39 days).
 
FUN FACT: Initially, the movie prop found by the FTF geocacher was never described, nor a photo posted. On August 29, 2006, however, geocacher TeamNulti2003 posted a picture on the cache page with a simple label of "Devil's Spoon." (See below). Oddly enough, the only A.P.E. cache listed as found by this geocacher was Mission 9: Tunnel of Light, posted online as “Found” on October 6, 2006, and with a geocaching.com “Joined” date of June 6, 2005. It is unclear how this geocacher obtained a picture of the Project A.P.E. Mission 1 movie prop, but it is nice to have a record of it.

Devil’s Spoon – original  prop 

Chimp Warrior Armor – replacement “prop”     

On May 31, 2006, TeamNulti2003 placed a replacement cache approximately 130 feet away from the location of the original cache and created a new geocache: GCWBRF Return to Planet of the Apes. A new FTF item was included in the replacement cache, chimp warrior armor, and since its placement (as of this writing in 2026) the geocache has been logged online as “Found” 123 times. While not the original, nor an official Project A.P.E. cache, this “revival” cache demonstrates how loved these special geocaches were, and continue to be, to the geocaching community.