Baffling America: Agloe New York

I don't know how we do that . How would we go about doing it ? We obviously can't just pretend and make a map , or can we ?

Yeah , and so it was quite common for map makers to plagiarize other map makers' work Cartographers , I guess they're called .

Yeah , and so when , in the 1920s , general Drafting , represented by Ernest Alpins and Otto Lindbergh , suspected that other mapmakers , such as Rand McNally , were in fact plagiarizing their maps , so when commissioned to make a map of the state of New York , the two of them used an anagram of their names to create the fictional town of Aglo Right , which was placed

at an intersection Catskill Mountains , new York , 206 . And they hoped to catch McNally and others . You know , by copying it , that they were . You know they made this town up by themselves . It was not . There's nothing there .

This small little story is quite large actually in a lot of ways I think Pretty is quite large , actually , in a lot of ways , I think , pretty interesting .

You know , this is what happened was saw Agla on the map , didn't take note of the fact that there were no buildings or houses in this , at this intersection , and so opened a general store oh my God . And by doing so then basically made it exist when it in fact did not .

Hey , side note , the original town I'm from technically is called Hammond Montana and you can look it up and it's a ghost town now and when I was growing up there it was literally just the post office in a school and the school was like a little trailer and the reasoning behind this people is because it was a ranch community , so like our nearest neighbors were

half hour away , kind of shit , and my school had six kids in it . So you know , I guess I could kind of see in relation to how this happened . You know what I'm saying , because think about all the little towns in Montana this is Montana , by the way people Hammond Montana , this is Montana , by the way People have it in Montana .

So anyway , but there's like two dots , what ?

I do remember playing around it when I was a kid , but yeah , there was a burned-down bar there

too . Yep , things happen . Very interesting life . Hopefully someday there'll just be a town , a town pump . Oh my God , yeah .

Hey , so nonetheless , when looking into this , yeah , it was very interesting that they basically busted the people who were counterfeiting Jeez , we can't speak today Marijuana , so like , at the end of the day , here they were counterfeiting their map , so they came up with a solution to catch them .

They caught them , them , and since this guy came up with a pretty good defense basically to counteract that lawsuit that they had filed against the fraudulent map makers right , so like . And that was to say that there was a general store there at one point in time that went out of business , like what the fuck ?

John Need owned that property and when he passed , my grandfather , frank Need , sold it to an organization called Aglo Associates . There was a fishing lodge already there and they renamed it Aglo Lodge . So probably just like a little shack , you know , like on his land . It was for private use .

Over the years the Need family came to the conclusion that Eglo Associates was actually a front for the Rand McNally Company , the fraudulent map makers , which had decided that buying the property it sold for only $1 , and renaming the lodge was much cheaper than defending a lawsuit . Dang , just saying that's pretty clever . So they paid $1 for the land .

What the fuck ? When was this again ? Because I don't even know when . The 20th , yeah , okay , well , maybe I guess . Yeah , right , fine , whatever , so anyway , nonetheless , yeah , apparently she basically maintains that there was never a general store there , but also she didn't live there the whole time . This comes from her great-grandfather .

You know , and she's At the end of all that she does . Say it's a sweet story , says Darlene , and it reminds me of my dad , john E Jr , whenever I hear it . He must have had a great childhood because he told wonderful stories about living here . Says Darlene again , but the Al Glo general store never existed .

So basically she's saying her dad always told her stories about growing up in this area his whole life and said that that store never existed . But nonetheless , did you look into the aftermath of what's going on with this city or this what-the-fuck-ever township ?

Yeah , then we can watch reruns of Family Ties and Scott Baio auditions . I didn't mean to throw Family Ties under the bus , I'm sorry . It was a great program of the 80s , but , yeah , I should not have associated with Scott Baio in any way , shape or form . I apologize deeply . Alex T Keaton , I'm sorry .

So it's hard to like , for nobody's gonna be able to steal it very easily at all , and uh , uh , also like it's very you can see it pretty clearly as well . So that's kind of neat . I don't know the whole story's fun . Hey , you know people out there , my friends in podcast land .

Yeah , I think we're friends , I don't know , maybe maybe acquaintances , getting to know each other , friends , you know that kind of thing . We could hang out and have a hot water at Owen's shop or something you know , cold Smoke Billings , montana . Okay , right .

So nonetheless , if you have anything like this , just , you know there is like a text thing on our below our episodes where you could just drop us a line . We can't answer you back , but like , nonetheless , you can drop us a line . We can't answer you back , but like , nonetheless you can drop us a line . I feel so and that'd be cool .

I would love to hear if you know of any like little ding shit towns that have a cool story in your neck of the woods , all right and you could also .

Hey , I did see a thing . Do you have more on this beyond just that , the tourism kind of picked up there ?

And then there's also it's mentioned prominently , apparently in the 2022 novel , the Cartographers by Tang Shepard . Huh , I haven't read or seen . I just don't even remember , honestly , how . I saw something in an article or on the TV that they mentioned this town and I was like we have to look into this a little bit .

Even if there's not much information , it's still pretty interesting .

You know there is a term for these and there's like streets and such and all sorts of things . I guess Trap streets , yeah , trap streets , and not like the ones in Oakland and or Billings , montana . All right , guys . Nonetheless , you hope not .

I know it's that kind of year . We don't want any , any trouble . No , don't .

This wasn't like a thing that they even invented , because it was a thing that people had done in the past for map making . Did you touch on that ? Okay , I just want to make sure . Also , in 2008 , argleton Village in West Lancashire , which I believe is in the UK I didn't see if it was or not , but that sounds right , guys .

So anyway appeared on Google , complete with weather reports , a job site and an estate agent advertising houses for sale . Argleton vanished two years later , while its site was , and still is , a damp field in the middle of nowhere . It's worth noting that Argleton is an anagram of G , not real , although Google never admitted to having created it .

So , basically , google created this town it doesn't explain how , but it was a real thing and Argleton was a phantom settlement planted as a trap .

So , however , they went about it though there was an instance of this in 2008 , and they had , like , a job site and everything , but it has since been gone , whereas Aglo is in our hearts and memories and sometimes on Google Maps still .

We need to figure out who owns this property and get a hold of them and see if we can't kind of , like you know , bargain some things Because we need a shantyplex , you know area , even though we've never even been to . I've never been to New York . You've stopped at the airport .

Speaking of which . I was reading some news and they did a throwback and they were talking about . It was like a nostalgia one . So it wasn't really news , guys , it was like an article or something . But they had that thing . They showed a picture of the ad against marijuana where the girls melted into the couch . You remember that growing up ?

Oh , definitely they don't do marijuana and it's so dramatic it's going to fucking . It was like they did a shot of fucking heroin or something .

If you want to make a movie , a feature film , of me and Owen getting really high and going to a lot of fancy restaurants in the Portland area , just let me know . All right , reach out , guys , cool . Anyway , on that note , owen , what do you think ?