OpenStreetMap County Boundary Issues

Question

With the news that all the county data was now being pulled from OpenStreetMap I went over to my stats to check it out. However upon doing so I now see that two counties which I have found a cache for no longer show as filled. Appears that OpenStreetMap incorrectly draws county boundaries and thus caches which lie in one county are now being reported as existing in the neighboring county.

My two example caches are as follows:

GC24MCJ, reported by Google Earth & GSAK as Marion but OpenStreetMap as Monroe.

GC3GQN4, reported by Google Earth & GSAK as Lafayette but OpenStreetMap as Saline.

Now it could very well be that OpenStreetMap is the more accurate one here and it's not like I won't ever be returning to these counties again, they're not too far from home. I just wanted to raise this point so that if any other people run into missing counties suddenly, this is why.

Comments

A more likely answer is that the borders where old and are now more accurate, but without mention of the exact counties and caches this is just an educated guess. :)

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Very good point, I have added some additional data onto my original post.

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Boundaries on maps differ heavily. Usually, between OSM, Google or Apple Maps and others, there are deviations of more than ten meters. Even in OSM, boundaries get updated and might vary.


Even before this update, it was always good advice to target caches, that are placed not close to the border/boundary to ensure that the region can be checked off. Usually, more than 100 meters/yards are sufficient.

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Just out of curiosity I measured the difference in the lines between the two maps, seeing a difference over 200 yards/180 meters in these two cases.

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And that Lafayette & Saline County line Google & GSAK show the boundary right at the overpass which is right where the physical markers on I-70 are as well. OpenStreetMap shows it over 200 yards west.

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yeah, these seem to be two of the extreme examples

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In 2016 I achieved "All counties in Germany", than 425. Now after the update I suddenly miss 2 (399 of 401) and they are NOT close to home.

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Thanks to OpenStreetMap I no longer have Logan County, Oklahoma as a found county. This is the cache in question: https://coord.info/GC3YMM3

GIS data from https://okmaps.org/ogi/search.aspx begs to differ and places the cache across the line into Logan County. I did have every county in Oklahoma found before this update - now I'm looking at a 6 hour round trip to fix my map.

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Well, you can get some geocaching done and be safer when chosing caches for your counties or you could contribute to OSM and the change will be imported in the future. If you want to actually solve the issue that is. :)