Agloe was originally a fictional hamlet in Colchester, Delaware County, New York, United States, that became an actual landmark after mapmakers made up the community as a phantom settlement, an example of a fictitious entry similar to a trap street, added to the map to catch plagiarism.
Agloe is also known for its role in the American romantic mystery novel Paper Towns by John Green and its film adaptation, as well as The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd.
In the 1920s, General Drafting founder Otto G. Lindberg and an assistant, Ernest Alpers, assigned an anagram of their initials to a dirt-road intersection in the Catskill Mountains: NY 206 and Morton Hill Road, north of Roscoe, New York.[2] The town was designed as a "copyright trap" to enable the publishers to detect others copying their maps.
A general store was alleged to exist at the intersection on the map and was given the name Agloe General Store because the name was on the Esso maps.[3] Long time residents and land owners contend that no store ever existed at the location. They believe Rand McNally bought the parcel though a front company to shield themselves from liability.[4] Later, Agloe appeared on a Rand McNally map after the mapmaker got the name of the "hamlet" from the Delaware County administration. When Esso threatened to sue Rand McNally for the assumed copyright infringement which the "trap" had revealed, the latter pointed out that the place had now become real and therefore no infringement could be established.
The store eventually went out of business but the Agloe General Store still appears on Google Maps. Agloe itself continued to appear on maps as recently as the 1990s, but has now been deleted. It briefly appeared on Google Maps.[5] The United States Geological Survey added "Agloe (Not Official)" to the Geographic Names Information System database on February 25, 2014.[6]
Agloe is featured in the 2008 novel Paper Towns by John Green and its 2015 film adaptation. During the film and in the novel, one of the main characters, Margo, runs away from home, leaving personal clues to her friend and neighbor Quentin of where she has gone. He then discovers she is hiding in one of the US's most famous "paper towns": Agloe, New York. The book's name is based on the various ways that Quentin interprets the phrase "paper towns".
Agloe is also featured prominently in the 2022 novel The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd.
41°57′57″N 74°54′22″W / 41.96583°N 74.90611°W / 41.96583; -74.90611