Arriving At Your Destination — Or Maybe Not: What Are Paper Towns?

Picture this: you’re on your vacation that you have planned for ages. Less about sightseeing and more about adventurous discovery, you are trekking through England to find those out-of-the-way places that never seem to earn a mention on any of the travel websites.

Armed with nothing but your trusty GPS and a playlist that’s 80% British Invasion and 20% questionable karaoke choices, you’re cruising along, somewhere between Aughton and Ormskirk. According to Google Maps, you are approaching your destination: the charming town of Argleton.

There’s just one tiny, insignificant, barely-worth-mentioning problem.

Argleton doesn’t exist.

That’s right. According to a 2009 screenshot of Google Maps, Argleton was a bona fide town nestled between two very real places. But if you were to pull over and step out of your car, expecting to find a quaint village square, a local pub, or even a sad-looking postbox, you’d find… well, nothing. Maybe a confused sheep or two, but definitely no Argleton.

So, what gives? Did Google Maps have a glitch? Did Argleton get swallowed by some sort of cartographical Bermuda Triangle? Or—bear with us here—was it all a deliberate trap?

Welcome to the Wacky World of Paper Towns

Argleton wasn’t the result of a Google Maps prank or a rogue cartographer with a flair for mischief. Instead, it was most likely a classic case of a paper town—a fake place inserted into a map as a copyright trap.

Here’s how it works: Mapmakers, being the meticulous folks they are, spend countless hours charting roads, towns, and other geographical goodies. But how do they protect their hard-earned work from sneaky competitors who might, say, copy their maps and pass them off as their own? Simple. They invent a fake town or two. If that imaginary place magically pops up on a rival’s map, gotcha!—plagiarism confirmed.

In Argleton’s case, it probably wasn’t Google who planted the faux town. Google sources its map data from Tele Atlas, a company owned by TomTom who, in turn, gets its data from other mapping companies, who—surprise!—get some of their data from even more mapping companies. Somewhere along this cartographical game of telephone, Argleton was born. Once the media caught wind of this phantom town, Google quickly erased it from their maps. But not before it earned a legacy as a bona fide ghost town—the kind that never had any ghosts to begin with.

Agloe: The Paper Town That Willed Itself into Existence

If you think Argleton’s story is odd, wait till you hear about Agloe, New York. Back in the 1930s, the General Drafting Company, in a stroke of creative genius (or maybe just a slow day at the office), invented Agloe as a copyright trap. They even named it using the initials of two cartographers: Otto G. Lindberg and Ernest Alpers. Agloe. Cute, right?

But here’s where things get really weird. In the 1950s, some enterprising locals near Roscoe, New York, noticed Agloe on an Esso road map. They figured, “Hey, if it’s on a map, it must be real, right?” So they opened a store and called it the Agloe General Store. And just like that, Agloe transformed from a fictional blip on a map to an actual place with a general store and everything.

When Rand McNally, another map company, included Agloe on their maps, Esso (thinking they’d successfully lured Rand McNally into their copyright trap) threatened legal action. But plot twist! Rand McNally pointed out that Agloe was now a real place, thank you very much. The lawsuit fizzled out, the store eventually closed, and Agloe slipped back into cartographical obscurity. But for a brief, shining moment, a fake paper town became real—all because someone believed in it hard enough.

Take that, Argleton.

More Phantom Places and Fictional Fixes

Argleton and Agloe aren’t the only fictional places to have caused real-world confusion. Here are a few more entries from the Atlas of Nowhere:

• Beatosu and Goblu, Ohio (1978): These non-existent towns made a guest appearance on Michigan’s official state map as a cheeky nod to the University of Michigan. Go Blue! And, presumably, Beat OSU! (The rivalry between Michigan and Ohio is very real, even if these towns aren’t.)

• Mount Richard: This fictitious peak appeared on U.S. county maps in the 1970s, courtesy of a draftsman named Richard Ciacci. It took two years for someone to realize, “Wait a minute, there’s no mountain here…”

• Philpott Street, Manchester: The 2002 Geographers A-Z Map of Manchester decided to play fast and loose with reality by renaming Dickinson Street to Philpott Street, just to see if any copyright thieves were paying attention.

• Ordnance Survey vs. The AA (2001): In the UK, the Ordnance Survey settled with the Automobile Association (the AA) for £20 million in a claim about copying their maps. The OS insisted they didn’t use fake towns as traps, but instead relied on subtle “fingerprints” like road widths.

When Words Get in on the Act

It’s not just maps that fall prey to these sneaky tricks. Dictionaries have their own version of paper towns, and it’s just as petty. In 2001, the New Oxford American Dictionary introduced the word esquivalence, defined as “the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities.” Spoiler alert: it wasn’t a real word. It was a copyright trap.

But guess what? It worked. Both Dictionary.com and Google’s dictionary picked it up, proving that even the wordsmiths aren’t immune to a little light plagiarism. Somewhere, a lexicographer is still laughing about this.

Accidental Plagiarism: The Apple Maps Edition

Now, sometimes, companies stumble into plagiarism without even trying. Before Apple launched its much-maligned Maps app, it created smaller-scale maps for iPhoto. But people quickly noticed something odd in Apple’s map of Norwich: a bunch of disorganized roads to the northeast that didn’t seem to exist.

Turns out, Apple had sourced its data from OpenStreetMap but mistook trails in a park for actual roads. A few months later, Apple officially credited OpenStreetMap, essentially admitting, “Yeah, we kind of… borrowed that.” Sometimes the road less traveled is the road that never existed in the first place.

The Moral of the Story? Trust, but Verify

Whether it’s a town that never was, a mountain that doesn’t exist, or a word that slipped into your vocabulary under false pretenses, the lesson here is clear: Maps lie. Dictionaries lie. Sometimes even your GPS is in on the joke. So, next time your navigation app sends you to a place that feels suspiciously like a grassy field in the middle of nowhere, don’t be too quick to blame your sense of direction.

You might just be standing in the middle of the next great paper town legend.

And hey, if you’re feeling entrepreneurial, maybe open a general store. You never know—it might just make the town real.

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