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

Mind the gaffe!

Many of you will be working on your dissertations right now (unless you really did get sidetracked by this). This is your chance to get your thoughts down on paper on screen and show the world what you know.

Photo: Word Nerd by Ryan Hyde. Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence

But how can you be sure you're expressing yourself perfectly?

You probably know the difference between illusion and allusion, but do you know your euphemism from your euphuism? Are you confident you know when to use fortuitous and when to say fortunate?


Well, don't worry, for help is at hand: the Library has plenty of guides to the English language. You can search MZE 140.3 on the catalogue for lots of examples, but my favourite is the no nonsense Mind the gaffe: the Penguin guide to common errors in English by R.L. Trask (MZE 140.3 TRA). In his introduction Trask says quite boldly:

Many other usage handbooks exist, but some of them are a little reluctant to lay down the law. They often tell the reader instead 'Well, some people prefer this, but other people prefer that.' I assume that you don't want to hear this. Instead, I expect, you want to read 'This is right, but that is wrong.' As far as possible, I'll try to say exactly that. This handbook adopts a much blunter tone than do most others. (p.2)

He does go on to moderate this statement (... or is that modify? aargh!) because he acknowledges that the English language is constantly changing, but Trask's approach is refreshing and his advice usually wise. Here are some typical entries:

• Meaningful - a vastly overused word, and one often used inexplicitly... (p.184)
• Methodology - a method is a single procedure for achieving some end. In contrast, a methodology is a set of conventional procedures, always principled and usually scientific or at least scholarly, for working in a particular discipline. The longer word is only appropriate in scientific and scholarly contexts, and it should not be used thoughtlessly as a fancy synonym for the shorter word. (p. 185)
• Comprise, consist, compose, constitute - these four verbs are very frequently confused, producing awful things like "The NATO forces are comprised of soldiers from eight countries"... (p.77)
• Simplistic - this is not a fancy word for simple… (p.260)

So if you're unsure whether you mean to say 'distrust' or 'mistrust', or if you're tied up in knots over whether to say 'due to' or 'owing to' then you might find this a very handy, light-hearted guide. (And for more of the same, I thoroughly recommend Lynne Truss' timeless Eats, shoots and leaves : the zero tolerance approach to punctuation - found at MZE 147 TRU.)

If you need more specific advice on structuring your assignment or developing your argument, then you could try dropping in at The Writing Centre in the Harry Fairhurst building, and for help with other study skills there is lots of advice in the University's Study Skills web pages.

And finally, even if you really can't seem to piece that dissertation together, whatever else you do don't try to fool anyone with this: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/. It won't end well.