As I headed towards my bathroom this morning, NPR Weekend Edition Sunday captured my attention with the phrase "If Rand McNally had done their own land survey." Peng Shepherd, author of The Cartographers: A Novel, was being interviewed. The book is a thriller about a young woman who discovers a strange map in her estranged father??s things after his untimely death. Please listen to the following MP3 file.
I'm not a fan of fiction, however I might consider buying this book. Fictitious maps, like fictitious surveys, have been around for a long time. I enjoyed looking at atlases when I was a boy, never contemplating that I would be working as a surveyor one day. I did some further reading on Wikipedia.
Phantom settlements, or paper towns, are settlements that appear on maps but do not actually exist. They are either accidents or copyright traps. Notable examples include Argleton, Lancashire, UK and Beatosu and Goblu, US. Agloe, New York, was invented on a 1930s map as a copyright trap.
You might enjoy reading The Imaginary Town That Refused To Stay Fake at https://everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/the-imaginary-town-that-refused-to?s=r .
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
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My, oh, my.?ÿ I read the link to the town that refused to stay fake.?ÿ In turn, it provides numerous links to the oddities of naming places and other things.?ÿ The reference to the history of streets named Grape Lane opens a cornucopia of street names you have never imagined, along with explanations for such names.?ÿ To whet your imagination, a clue is that Grape was originally Grope.
Map men did a fun episode about this topic:
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We have all sorts of place names they could use and no local would be offended.?ÿ We surveyed in Idenboro last summer.?ÿ Except for the shambles of what had once been a small depot building and some pens for loading livestock directly into train cars, there was absolutely nothing to suggest a town.
Mule Barn, OK is a dubious location that somehow popped up in the '90s about the same time digital maps became popular.?ÿ Whether or not it was a figment of someone's imagination is now a moot point as it's presence has become permanently ingrained in our digital records.?ÿ
One old man that has lived near the area for decades has reported he never heard of Mule Barn until people started "comin' around a few years back" and asking about it.?ÿ
Viva Mule Barn!?ÿ
