Sixty years ago this month, the March 1966 issue of Boys’ Life carried a feature by William “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt showing a number of methods to determine the points of the compass. The method shown above, if you had the time, was exact.

A faster but less accurate method was shown at the left. You place a straight stick in the ground so that it casts no shadow. You wait, and the inevitable shadow will be pointing approximately west. How close the method worked depended on how close you were to noon, and how close you were to the equinoxes.