Agloe, New York

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Agloe
A General Drafting map location
FictionalAgloeNewYork.PNG
Fictional Agloe, New York, a copyright trap, shown on a real map of New York published by Exxon in 1998.
First appearance1925
Created byOtto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers
Genre Map
In-universe information
Type Copyright trap
LocationsAgloe General Store (formerly)
State New York
County Delaware County, New York
Town Colchester, New York
ZIP code 12776 [1]

Agloe was originally a fictional hamlet in Colchester, Delaware County, New York, United States, that became an actual landmark after mapmakers made up the community as a phantom settlement, an example of a fictitious entry similar to a trap street, added to the map to catch plagiarism.

Contents

Agloe is also known for its role in the American romantic mystery novel Paper Towns by John Green and its film adaptation, as well as The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd.

History

In the 1920s, General Drafting founder Otto G. Lindberg and an assistant, Ernest Alpers, assigned an anagram of their initials to a dirt-road intersection in the Catskill Mountains: NY 206 and Morton Hill Road, north of Roscoe, New York. [2] The town was designed as a "copyright trap" to enable the publishers to detect others copying their maps.

A general store was alleged to exist at the intersection on the map and was given the name Agloe General Store because the name was on the Esso maps. [3] Long time residents and land owners contend that no store ever existed at the location. They believe Rand McNally bought the parcel though a front company to shield themselves from liability. [4] Later, Agloe appeared on a Rand McNally map after the mapmaker got the name of the "hamlet" from the Delaware County administration. When Esso threatened to sue Rand McNally for the assumed copyright infringement which the "trap" had revealed, the latter pointed out that the place had now become real and therefore no infringement could be established.

The store eventually went out of business but the Agloe General Store still appears on Google Maps. Agloe itself continued to appear on maps as recently as the 1990s, but has now been deleted. It briefly appeared on Google Maps. [5] The United States Geological Survey added "Agloe (Not Official)" to the Geographic Names Information System database on February 25, 2014. [6]

Agloe is featured in the 2008 novel Paper Towns by John Green and its 2015 film adaptation. During the film and in the novel, one of the main characters, Margo, runs away from home, leaving personal clues to her friend and neighbor Quentin of where she has gone. He then discovers she is hiding in one of the US's most famous "paper towns": Agloe, New York. The book's name is based on the various ways that Quentin interprets the phrase "paper towns".

Agloe is also featured prominently in the 2022 novel The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cartography</span> Study and practice of making maps

Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.

<i>Thomas Guide</i> American series of street atlases

Thomas Guide is a series of paperback, spiral-bound atlases featuring detailed street maps of various large metropolitan areas in the United States, including Boise, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Oakland, Phoenix, Portland, Reno-Tahoe, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, Tucson, and Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Road Atlas titles are Arizona including Las Vegas, California Including portions of Nevada, and Pacific Northwest covering Washington, Oregon, Western Idaho, Southwestern British Columbia. The map books are usually arranged by county; for example, separate Thomas Guides have been published for Los Angeles County and San Diego County. There are also guides that will have two or three counties combined, or guides that cover a metropolitan area. Each guide has a detailed index of streets and points of interest, as well as arterial maps for easy page location.

Rand McNally is an American technology and publishing company that provides mapping, software and hardware for consumer electronics, commercial transportation and education markets. The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with a distribution center in Richmond, Kentucky.

Fictitious or fake entries are deliberately incorrect entries in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories, added by the editors as copyright traps to reveal subsequent plagiarism or copyright infringement. There are more specific terms for particular kinds of fictitious entry, such as Mountweazel, trap street, paper town, phantom settlement, and nihilartikel.

In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential plagiarists of the map who, if caught, would be unable to explain the inclusion of the "trap street" on their map as innocent. On maps that are not of streets, other "trap" features may be inserted or altered for the same purpose.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York State Route 23B</span> State highway in Columbia County, New York, US

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<i>Paper Towns</i> (novel) 2008 novel by John Green

Paper Towns is a novel written by John Green, published on October 16, 2008, by Dutton Books. The novel is about the coming-of-age of the protagonist, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen and his search for Margo Roth Spiegelman, his neighbor and childhood crush. During his search, Quentin and his friends Ben, Radar, and Lacey discover information about Margo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Argleton</span> Phantom settlement formerly visible on Google Maps

Argleton was a phantom settlement that appeared on Google Maps and Google Earth but was later removed by Google. The supposed location of Argleton was between the A59 road and Town Green railway station within the civil parish of Aughton in West Lancashire, England, in an area of empty fields. Data from Google is used by other online information services, which consequently treated Argleton as a real settlement within the L39 postcode area. As a result, Argleton also appeared in numerous listings for things such as estate and letting agents, employment agencies and weather, but although the people, businesses and services listed are all in fact real, they are elsewhere in the same postcode district.

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 in Lancashire, UK and Beatosu and Goblu, US.

Peng Shepherd is an American author. Her first novel, The Book of M, was released in 2018, followed by The Future Library in 2021 and The Cartographers in 2022. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

References

  1. "US Postal Code Boundaries". Google. Google Maps. February 3, 2014. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  2. Lackie, John (November 25, 2006). "Copyright traps". New Scientist . 192 (2574) (The Word ed.): 62. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(06)60797-5. Archived from the original on October 13, 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2008.
  3. Byrne, Ian (March 19, 2006). "Errors on road maps(2)". Petrol Maps. ianbyrne.free-online.co.uk. Archived from the original on September 28, 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2008.
  4. Writer, Staff. "The strange story of Agloe, NY". Times Herald-Record. Retrieved May 30, 2024.
  5. Krulwich, Robert (March 18, 2014). "An Imaginary Town Becomes Real, Then Not. True Story". NPR. Retrieved June 3, 2014.
  6. "Agloe (Not Official)". Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. February 25, 2014. Retrieved December 15, 2015.

41°57′57″N74°54′22″W / 41.96583°N 74.90611°W / 41.96583; -74.90611