Mystery of a town wiped off the map by Google: How the fake Agloe, New York, conceived as a 'copyright trap' by cartographers turned into a real hamlet before vanishing forever  

  • Agloe is fictional town that mapmakers Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers put on map of Sullivan County in 1925
  • Town's name is anagram of Lindberg and Alpers' initials - OGL and EA 
  • Site is a dirt-road intersection between Rockland and Beaver Kill
  • Google Maps removed fake hamlet March 17, nearly 90 years after it was created by cartographers

By Snejana Farberov

PUBLISHED: 18:30 EST, 29 March 2014 | UPDATED: 10:55 EST, 30 March 2014

As recently as last Sunday, day-trippers looking to take a scenic drive through upstate New York were able to pull up directions on Google Maps to a tiny hamlet called Agloe nestled in the Catskills.

The distant, virtually unknown locale has since been wiped off the map, but the real kicker to this story is that Algoe never really existed.

In the early 1920s, a small patch of land between the towns of Rockland and Beaver Kill in Sullivan County was nothing more than a dirt-road intersection of New York Route 206 and Morton Hill Road.

Paper town: On March 17, 2014, Google Maps removed the fictitious town of Agloe from the virtual map of upstate New York - nearly 90 years after it was created by a pair of cartographers

Paper town: On March 17, 2014, Google Maps removed the fictitious town of Agloe from the virtual map of upstate New York - nearly 90 years after it was created by a pair of cartographers

Geographic ruse: Otto G. Lindberg, head of the General Drafting Company, and his assistant, Ernest Alpers, made up a fake town and positioned it in Sullivan County as a way to protect their map from being lifted by other companies

Geographic ruse: Otto G. Lindberg, head of the General Drafting Company, and his assistant, Ernest Alpers, made up a fake town and positioned it in Sullivan County as a way to protect their map from being lifted by other companies

Hardly anyone ever visited the largely deserted, out-of-the-way site located some 120miles from New York City, which made it an ideal 'copyright trap,' as NPR reported last week, citing Frank Jacobs' blog Strange Maps.

Cartographers seeking to prevent other companies from lifting their work without permission often resorted to trickery, inserting fictitious landmarks as tell-tale signs of piracy.

That is what Otto G. Lindberg, head of the General Drafting Company, had in mind when he teamed up with his assistant, Ernest Alpers, to concoct an entirely imaginary 'paper town', which the pair dubbed Agloe - the name an anagram of their initials, O.G.L. and E.A.

The General Drafting Company, one of the 'big three' mapmakers in the country in the 1930s, sought to safeguard its intellectual property.

 

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To do that, Lindberg and Alpers positioned the entirely fake hamlet of Agloe on the map of upstate New York just north of Roscoe.

In the event of a copyright lawsuit, all they needed to do to prove that their map had been pirated was to point to Agloe, which obviously did not exist on any other map except their own because it was fake.

Lindberg and Alpers' clever ruse was put to the test when a few years later, the map company Rand McNally printed its own version of a New Yoke State map, which featured the made-up Agloe.

In a bizarre twist, when Rand McNally officials were questioned in court about the existence of the fake homestead on their map, identical in its spelling and location to that of the General Drafting Company’s, the competitors pointed out that their draftsmen found a building in that location called the Agloe General Store, suggesting that the business was named after a geographic location.

It so happened that the country store's name was inspired by Lindberg and Alpers' fake town, which the owners had discovered on a map at an Esso gas station, thus effectively turning a 'paper town' into a real place.

Ironic twist: When Lindberg sued the map company Randy McNally for ripping off his map containing the bogus 'copyright trap' hamlet of Agloe, the defendants pointed out that their draftsmen found a building in that location called the Agloe General Store

Ironic twist: When Lindberg sued the map company Rand McNally for ripping off his map containing the bogus 'copyright trap' hamlet of Agloe, the defendants pointed out that their draftsmen found a building in that location called the Agloe General Store

In the New York Times’ retelling of the story, it was a fishing lodge named Agloe, not a general store, which helped Rand McNally get off the hook in the copyright case.

In The Times account, about five years after Lindberg came up with Agloe, he paid a visit to the fishing lodge named after the fake town and informed its proprietor that he was the one who put the place on the map, literally. 

However it may be, over the years, the enigmatic Agloe has gained a small following among amateur cartographers - and more recently, bookish teens.

In 1957, a piece in The Times waxed poetic about scenic drives through the Catskills and mentioned 'an unmarked country road that goes north through Rockland and Agloe.'

Agloe's popularity spiked in 2008, when the make-believe town appeared in John Green's young adult novel called 'Paper Towns' (soon to be turned into a motion picture produced by Fox 2000).   

All that remains of the fabled Agloe now is a derelict barn, a former creamery, an old wooden airport hanger, a castle-like structure owned by the Masonic Order, and the rundown building that once housed the Agloe fishing lodge.

But the legend of Agloe, the upstate New York Shangri La, lives on.
 

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Where I live in California there was supposed to be a new community to be called Springville. This was in the early 20's or late 10's. It never came about. Not one house or building was built.But some maps still show the area as being Springville.They recently built a overpass that goes over the 101 freeway. It connects a new road to the other side an area that the city wishes to develop. The road is called Springville road.The town that never existed.

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There is a Springville in the mountains above Porterville.

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Same as seeding a mailing list in case someone nicks it.

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Dictionary makes do this too. Democracy is a made up word! And payrise.

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Downing Street is a fiction.

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I don't buy it.

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No, honestly. I've long heard of cartographers inserting such things to keep their maps from being pirated by lazy oafs wanting to cash in on all their hard work.

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You should buy it, the A-Z mapping company in the UK use this trick all the time to protect their copyright, especially for their A-Z of London

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It's a Sunday, no news to report ...

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Not new Speed used quare or ? in 1611... most mapmakers did it to stop copying

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Don't get your hopes up; Florida really exists.

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Ordnance survey maps has these traps too. Very pricey if you got caught

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Which is why I am very grateful to those websites who are now putting on-line scrollable old Ordnance Survey (and others) maps that are out of copyright. Especially good are those who also overlay the maps onto the latest maps/satellite images so you can see the changes to the landscape over the decades!

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Rubbish. As an Ex Ordnance Survey cartographer I can assure you nothing like that happened in my day. Checking of details was scrupulous, whole sections were devoted to accuracy.

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Brigadoon, a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every hundred years. Tommy, one of the tourists, falls in love with Fiona, a young woman from Brigadoon.

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I think I saw a "Documentary" about that in 1950, :) - A lot of Americans with strange accents in Ireland !

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