There are fake towns, there are real towns, and then there is Agloe in upstate New York. The town was invented as a cartographical ruse in the 1930s, but it somehow ended up becoming real. Agloe’s story might be the strangest in the already strange history of copyright traps in maps.
Usually, mapmakers don’t invent whole towns out of paper and ink. Usually, they craft more subtle traps: nonexistent dead ends or fake river bends or adjusted mountain elevations. Mapmakers rarely officially admit to “trap streets,” but it’s an age-old practice to keep copycats at bay.
via Gizmodo
