Long Before Pokemon Go, There Was Geocaching

In 2000, a computer consultant named Dave Ulmer placed a five-gallon bucket in the woods near Beavercreek, Ore., leaving behind some CDs, a VHS tape, a slingshot, a Ross Perot book, a can of beans, and a logbook. He posted the coordinates online, using the global position system, and declared one rule: Take something, leave something. Sixteen years later, there would be hundreds of thousands of smartphone-wielding people hoping to find a psychic duck or anthropomorphic turtle, using virtually the same game mechanics employed in Ulmer's strange scavenger hunt.

Before the Pokemon Go craze, combing the world in search of secret stashes at specified coordinates—a pursuit called geocaching—was the domain of a quieter subculture. The hobby was made possible by President Bill Clinton. The U.S. government had purposefully limited the accuracy of GPS tracking for the general public by adding errors to the system, citing national security concerns. In May 2000, shortly before Ulmer left his stash in the woods, the White House allowed anyone access to errorless location signals.