Mountweazels in Argleton: the phantom town on Google Maps, and the woman who never was

Tom Grady goes trapping for Mountweazels.

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Have you ever been to the town of Argleton? Probably not, because it doesn’t exist and never did. But for a while you could find it just off the A59 on Google Maps. 

If you had been there, I suppose you might have run into Lillian V. Mountweazel, a celebrated photographer, known for her shots of rural American mailboxes. She never existed either but she’s in an edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia. So what’s going on? Copyright traps my friend, copyright traps.

The bustling metropolis of Argleton.
Photo courtesy of Micahel Nolan, neighbour; used under a Creative Commons licence.

Most cartographers will deny it, but it’s rumoured that they deliberately introduce mistakes into their maps in order to catch out copyright violators. Usually the ‘mistakes’ are small, like an extra cul-de-sac here or an exaggerated bend in a road there: they are calculated imperfections that identify authorship and are often known as ‘trap streets’. But the settlement of Argleton could be the boldest example yet - a ‘trap town’. Or it could just have been a genuine mistake that got corrected: either way, for a time it was on the map and then suddenly it wasn’t.

But in-between, the world went slightly mad.

Despite it never existing, news of the fictitious settlement spread across the internet after it was spotted and blogged about by a nearby resident in 2008. The story was picked up by mainstream media, gained momentum, and at one point you could even buy t-shirts bearing the slogan "I visited Argleton and all I got was this t-shirt". Pretty soon, you could find job listings, hotels, flats to rent, and even a chiropractor based there. According to The Daily Telegraph “the businesses, people and services listed [were] real, but actually based elsewhere in the same postcode”. Google removed the town from its maps in May 2010 and released a statement saying that it was a simple, unexplained error. As an earlier blog post of ours explains, you can report errors yourself and get them fixed.

A real weasel. Photo by Jared Kelly,
used under a Creative Commons licence.

But the case of Lillian Virginia Mountweazel is much more cut-and-dried: she was definitely made up.

The 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia has an entry for the "fountain designer turned photographer" who died "in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine" but a former New Columbia editor explained it quite simply to the New Yorker magazine:

"It was an old tradition in encyclopedias to put in a fake entry to protect your copyright," Richard Steins, who was one of the volume’s editors, said... "If someone copied Lillian, then we’d know they’d stolen from us."

In a neat twist, the word 'Mountweazel' has now entered general usage as a term used to describe these lexicographical traps. It is an excellent word. See also Esquivalience.

Further reading:

1. If you’d like to know what the sky above Argleton and other non-existent places looks like, then there’s a Tumblr site for that (of course there is) theskyontrapstreet.tumblr.com
2. More Mountweazels can be found at mentalfloss.com

How I fixed the Library bridge

The Camera Guy
Detail from Google Street View. Copyright 2014 Google.

Max Spicer sets the Google Maps world to rights.

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You may have seen that Google recently added Street View photos for both of the University's campuses. As you can't just drive around in a car, they sent someone with a camera on their back to walk around the many paths that weave around our beautiful grounds. You can now explore the campuses without having to get off the sofa and you can even find the guy with the camera if you look hard enough!

This is great for seeing what stuff looks like and, let's be honest, spending hours trying to find if anyone you know got caught on camera. However, Google Maps can do much more. You've probably already used Google to get directions - maybe to work out how to drive to the University - but did you know you can also use it to work out your walking route around campus once you get there? Google's got our roads and paths mapped out, so it can tell you the best way to walk between Central Hall and The Ron Cooke Hub as well as showing you what it will look like when you get there.

This is really useful, especially if you're new to the University, but when I tried out walking directions on Google Maps a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find that Google didn't know about the Library bridge. You could clearly see the bridge on Street View and in the satellite photos, but on the map itself it simply wasn't there. This meant Google's directions were hopeless. You can get between the Library and Market Square in about a minute on foot, but Google sent you off along paths and roads in completely the wrong direction.

Report a problem
Detail from Google Street View. Copyright 2014 Google.

That's not a problem any more, and I'm the one that fixed it. Google Maps now has the Library bridge, and I made sure that it got there. So, how did I do this? Simple - I clicked a link. At the bottom right of Google Maps there's a Report a problem link. I clicked this, then followed a couple of easy steps to say what was missing. Less than a week later, I got an email from Google saying "you were right!" and the maps were fixed.

There are actually quite a few bits of the campus paths that aren't right on Google Maps, or buildings with the wrong name, but it really is easy and quick to get them fixed and doing so will make Google Maps a great tool to help people find their way around the University. Have a look at the maps of campus and if you see anything wrong or missing, click that Report a problem link!

The Library Bridge - now on Google Maps
Edited detail from Google Street View. Copyright 2014 Google

PS: Behind the scenes, there's a great tool called Google Map Maker that lets you make changes to maps by hand. When you click Report a problem, the problems mostly get submitted to this tool and are reviewed and fixed by members of the community. Anyone can get involved, but that's probably the subject of another blog post.