Sweet Corn Mazes
I couldn’t resist the title…sorry.
I can’t help but think about my skydiving experience nearly everytime I look at google earth, or any satellite images really.
Yesterday I was checking out naked people on google earth and I started thinking about my skydiving experience. I remembered the corn maze I could see from the edge of the plane, 13,000 feet in the air. That made me wonder how many corn mazes I could see on google earth. There are tons.
Here, in not particular order, are 10 of the more interesting ones I found. Click on the pictures to view in google maps.
1. Winterset, IA
Starting off small with the small maze of Winterset, Iowa. Appropriately sized given that the birthplace of John Wayne has a population of less than 5,000.
2. Liberty, MO
Kansas Speedway is the Liberty Maze theme from 2005. It features 380 feet of bridges for added adventure. The smaller, square maze to the north is a soy bean maze for the little ones.
3. Atkins, IA
This ten acre corn maze on the Bloomsbury Family Farm features Mr. Shucks, the Cedar Rapids Kernels team mascot. This is the 2006 design.
4. West Salem, WI
Buck Fever.
5. Pleasant Grove, UT
Hee Haw Farms plows out a new maze every year. This one, from 2004, was in honor of the presidential election.
6. Hastings, MN
This maze at the Afton Apple Orchard is 12 acres large. It features a dairy cow and a pale of apples.
7. Pitt Meadows, BC
The Meadows Maze is a 17-Acre corn maze on Hopcott Farms. This is their 2004 maze. It’s hard to tell, but the maze is an image of a male and a female bee gazing at each other in front of the Bee Hive.
8. Rural Hill, NC
The Amazing Maize Maze of Rural Hill Farms named their 2004 maze “Cannons on the Catawba.” It was desgined to commemorate the Revolutionary war Battle of Cowan’s Ford. This must be pretty late in the year, the green version on their website is a little more impresive. It’s a cannon, if you couldn’t tell.
Besides the fact that it’s two puns in three words, the “Amazing Maize Maze” is also a trademarked name of Rural Hill Farms.
9. Dole Plantation, HI
Okay, so it’s not a corn maze, but the maze on the Dole Plantation did make it into The Guiness Book in 2001 as the world’s largest maze. The maze is made from native Hawaiian vegetation.
10. Ames, IA
Dan-D Farm’s corn maze from 2003 celebrates the rivalry between Iowa and Iowa State. It’s 17 acres and takes a person one to two hours to complete. Cyclones suck!
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Wow — those are fabulous. Thanks. I had no idea corn mazes existed. (And no need to apologize for the title — I appreciated the word play. And it makes me wonder if someone came up with the idea of making mazes from maize because of the name, or is it just because it’s the right height?)
They look like an amazing (sorry) amount of work. Know anything about how they’re created?
waltzingaustralia- All I know about creating a corn maze I gleaned from the Meadows Maze website. They use a GPS to help them map out where the trails are going to be, then a tractor creates the trails by tearing up the soil when the corn is just sprouting. I assume that doing this when the corn is small allows them to see both where the corn is going to be, and where the tractor has already been.
Rural Hills website says that the mazes got a large boost in the 1970s when farmers needed other means of revenue to support the farm. Today, almost none of these mazes are the only attraction the farm provides. Most of them have all kinds of fall activities including hayrack rides, haunted mazes, petting zoos, games, food and more.
Thanks for the response.
I need to get out there and check some of these out.
Great Idea to map corn mazes via Google Earth. This must be a lot of work to find the maze and to map them.
In the UK there is a maze in maize and at their website you can also read how they make the maze
http://www.mazeinmaize.co.uk/maze%20in%20making.html
Via puzzles.about.com you can also find a list of mazes in North America.
http://puzzles.about.com/library/weekly/blmazeus.htm