Phantom Settlements
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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