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Depending on how old you are, you might remember having to pull out a paper map to find your way around a place. Back then, we didn’t have Siri or GPS. We were forced to put on our thinking caps and navigate the world in a slightly more complex way, or risk getting completely lost. In today’s digital world, more than a billion people use Google Maps every month, but that doesn’t mean physical maps are a thing of the past.
Maps aren’t only used for navigation, after all, as this online group proves. It has more than 5.3 million members sharing fascinating maps detailing everything under the sun, from the most overworked countries in the world, to a visual representation of all the lighthouses in France, and even places where cheek-kissing is a common greeting.
Bored Panda has picked the most intriguing posts from the page to take you on a journey fit for the most curious of cartophiles. And don’t miss the fascinating story about a fake town that once appeared on a map, and suddenly became real.
Maps are generally seen as pretty reliable. But you might be surprised to know that cartographers (the people who make maps) sometimes insert fake towns and streets onto them. They aren’t doing this to confuse travelers but rather to catch anyone who tries to forge the map, or infringe on copyright.
The fake places are known as “paper towns” and “trap-streets”. And in a super bizarre turn of events, one of the phantom towns became real for a short while, before swiftly disappearing again.
In the 1930s, Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers from General Drafting Co. were making a road map of New York state. They decided to make up a fictitious hamlet called “Agloe”, and marked it on a dirt road, somewhere between Rockland and Beaverkill. The duo came up with the name by combining letters of their own names. The map was printed and that was that… or not.
As it turns out, a well-known map company called Rand McNally created their own New York state map a few years later. They seemingly fell straight into the trap, placing “Agloe” on the same spot as General Drafting Co. had.
Naturally, when Lindberg got wind of this, he mapped out his revenge and took the matter to court, but his rivals warned that he wouldn’t win the case. The defendants claimed that “Agloe” did in fact exist. And they had grounds to prove it.
McNally pointed out that Agloe had a general store, and if Lindberg and his team visited the area, they’d find the shop at the intersection marked on the map. They weren’t wrong. Strangely, a shopkeeper had spotted Agloe on a map, and decided to start a business there. This is despite a lack of any surrounding houses or signs of life. Nevertheless, that shop provided enough proof for General Drafting to avoid being sued for copyright infringement.
Agloe’s general store didn’t last long. We’d hazard a guess it had to do with a lack of demand. But the whole ordeal certainly put the town on the map, so to speak. Author John Green even mentioned it in his novel Paper Towns. “When its protagonist Margo disappears, she leaves oblique clues as to her whereabouts. The trail leads to somewhere and nowhere – Agloe,” reported the Guardian.
Some maps still feature the little hamlet of “Agloe.” It was even visible on Google Maps, until it was removed in 2014. Despite its non-existence, people flock to visit “Agloe”, intrigued by the back story of this mythical “paper town”. And maybe today, a general shop would be useful commodity on that deserted dirt road after all.
“Agloe” wouldn’t be the only phantom place to appear on Google Maps. In 2009, a place called Argleton attracted camera crews and made headlines. But when reporters visited the “village” near Ormskirk, Lancashire, all they found was… nothing much but a muddy field.
“I grew up in the area and spotted on the map one day that it said ‘Argleton’. But it’s just a farmer’s field close to the village hall and playing fields. I think a footpath goes across the field, but that’s all,” said Mike Nolan, the man who originally spotted the village on Google Maps. “The name ‘Argleton’ is similar to ‘Aughton’. Maybe someone made a mistake when keying in the name?”
Maybe. Or maybe Argleton, like Agloe, is simply a paper town in a digital world where people love a good mystery.
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