![]() ![]() Rand McNally, one presumes, was found not guilty. So, a made-up name for a made-up place inadvertently created a real place that, for a time, really existed. If Esso says this place is called Agloe, the store folks figured, well, that's what we'll call ourselves. Esso had bought that map from Lindberg and Alpers. The owners had seen Agloe on a map distributed by Esso, which owned scores of gas stations. Otherwise, where'd the owners get the name? Rand McNally told the court that its designers went to the official map of that county, looked up the coordinates, and on the spot called Agloe they found a building, and that building, they told the judge, is the Agloe General Store. And they offered this totally startling defense. Unless the mapmaker runs a little scam.Ī few years later, Rand McNally, the famous map company, issued its own New York state map, and, guess what? Right there in the same place - same spelling - was the exact same Totally Made-Up Town, "Agloe." Jurors think, "Hmm, sounds reasonable," and the pirates get away with it. So we're only guilty of describing the same world the other map described. Because there's a real world out there, obviously maps are going to be identical. The pirates say, "Prove it." It's a map, they say. You check spellings, you work on the colors, you get all the cities in the right place, and along comes a gas company, or a tourism agency it takes what you've done, slaps its own name on it. ![]() This wasn't an important or often visited place, which made it a perfect spot for what's called a "paper town," or a map "trap."Ĭompanies that create maps get their work copied all the time. It was very small- had one grocery store, one cafe, one Italian restaurant, etc. Coming from a Jersey girl, this town was TINY. If you are unfamiliar with the term, a paper town is one that is not on a map and no one really knows about it. In the 1930s (I learned from Frank Jacobs' excellent blog, Strange Maps), there was no town on that stretch between Rockland and nearby Beaverkill - just a dirt road. We did not actually go to a real paper town. just up the road from Roscoe and Rockland. ![]()
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