"letter[-]boxing" -- revival of a sport?

[Joel S. Berson]

The following usage of "letterboxing" does not appear to be in the OED.

An article in today's Boston Globe by Joseph P. Kahn (G12-13)
describes a sport called "letterboxing".  In its simplest form, a box
containing a log book and an inkstamp is left somewhere, and clues to
its location are posted.  A sportsman (or woman) who finds a
letterbox uses its stamp to record hjis/her discovery in his/her
logbook, and uses his/her stamp to record his/her discovery in the
letterbox's logbook.  "According to www.atlastquest.com, s popular
letterboxing website, some 100,000 letterboxes are stashed somewhere
around the globe---with 23,000 Atlas Quest member hunting for them
... Letterboxing North America (www.letterboxing.org) ... claims more
han 44,400 members."

Kahn writes that "letterboxing traces its origins to 19th-century
England, when hikers in and around the Dartmoor area began leaving
letters or postcards ... for other hikers to find, collect, and
sometimes forward to one another by mail.  This quaint if obscure
pastime was featured in a 1988 Smithsonian magazine article ...".  [I
wonder if any were left by escaped prisoners, or perhaps by Sherlock
or his runner while he was ensconced on the moor looking for the Hound.]

A superficial Google Books search turns up nothing prior to
1988.  One must skip over two other senses:

* Placing campaign or other leaflets or handbills in household letter
boxes, many of the earliest instances being from Australia.

* Adjusting the format of movies or videos to accommodate them to
television screen dimensions.  (This, I think, also is not in the OED.)

By 1989 there is from "Guide to the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of
natural history" (Roger Tory Peterson Institute):  "'Letterboxing,'
as the tradition has come to be known, is hugely popular. More than a
thousand boxes are hidden in natural, historic, and cultural locations."

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org