![]() ![]() ![]() 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. ![]() 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. ![]() just up the road from Roscoe and Rockland. ![]()
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