Brinton Run Preserve is the newest location of a PokéStop in the popular mobile game Pokémon GO! Pokémon GO is a free app that uses location tracking and mapping technology to create an augmented reality (AR) where players catch and train Pokémon characters in real locations. A PokéStop is a place of interest in your community where players can travel to and collect items in-game. As shown below, the blue icon in the left image identifies the location of our PokéStop at the Kiosk in the Brinton Run Preserve parking lot.
Brinton Run Preserve Kiosk PokéStop submitted by NALT GIS Specialist Steve DiSipio.
When you see a PokéStop in game, you must walk within 80 meters of the centerpoint of that stop to be able to select it. Once selected, you can spin that image of the stop (shown in the middle image) and collect all of the items that appear!
In order to create a PokéStop, the site you would like to nominate must meet one of the games’ eligibility requirements. It must be a place for exploration, exercise, or a place to be social with others, and Binton Run Preserve is a great place for all three! Once a site meets one of those criteria and you are up to Level 37 in-game, you can submit a nomination for that site to be turned into a PokéStop.
The Process: To submit a nomination, you must start in the Pokémon GO app, go in settings, uploads, and then under contributions, select New PokéStop. You then must be at the geographic location of the object you wish to be the symbol for your PokéStop, followed by taking a photo of said object. Next you give it a title, which will be the name shown on the PokéStop in-game upon acceptance, as well as a short paragraph describing the site. Then, you select the category that your object may fall under, such as a garden, outdoor recreational space, educational center, etc. In the case of our Brinton Run Preserve kiosk, the site acts as a trailhead and was categorized as a Hiking Trail, Nature Preserve, and as a Historic Site being a part of the Brandywine Battlefield.
Following the nomination submission, it then goes out for community voting via the Niantic Wayfarer website. Here, community members have the opportunity to review the nomination and vote on whether or not the site meets the eligibility requirements. The community voting stage takes anywhere from a month to over a year depending on the community presence of your geographic region. For reference, our PokéStop took about 6 months to be accepted, as it was submitted in July 2023, and accepted in January 2024.
As previously mentioned, Pokémon Go operates through a company called Niantic, which has produced many other Augmented Reality games like Pikmin Bloom, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Monster Hunter Now, Peridot… etc. Just as Pokémon GO has PokéStops, all of these games have similar location-based stops. Niantic then uses those same locations as in-game stops across all of their games, which means, now that the BRP kiosk PokéStop is present in Pokemon Go, that stop should appear on all other Niantic games as well!
We hope to continue to add PokéStops out at Brinton Run Preserve as we increase our presence and amenities, but we encourage gamers to come out and enjoy our walking trails as we level up together!
