In fall months, particularly in October, those mysterious intricate patterns carved in agricultural fields sometimes spotted in flights over American farmlands, are not extraterrestrial crop circles – they’re cornfield mazes, wildly popular tourist attractions during the fall festival and Halloween season. 

A cornfield maze, aka corn maze or maize maze, is a labyrinth cut out of a cornfield solely for use as public entertainment, an idea that began with the hedge design in the formal gardens of English castles.  Today, across America, negotiating the detours and dead ends of paths cut through 10′ cornstalks waving gently high overhead is a great way for families to have fun together in the crisp, fall air.  It’s also a way for family farms to generate additional income.

Corn mazes are a wonderful form of pop art.  Seen from the air, they are creative and intricate themed carvings, many featuring seasonal or widely recognizable characters.  The journey from conceptual drawing to corn maze, often encompassing many acres, takes a lot of work – and a good GPS.  Family farms with a creative staff can develop smaller ones the old-fashioned way, with graph paper, a tape measure, and poles; the really big ones are usually the work of maze designers and maze creation companies.

Big or small, corn mazes are magical, memorable, old-fashioned family fun, and they stretch from coast to coast, many within easy drives of major tourist destinations.  Several online corn maze directories, with descriptions and directions, assist in finding them.

Visiting Boston, drive west about 50 miles to Sterling, and “Go for the Gold” at Davis Farm, New England’s oldest and largest cornfield maze!   If this big one seems daunting, they’re lots of smaller ones throughout the New England autumnal countryside.

For a change of pace when visiting Washington, D.C., just 45 minutes out of the city in pastoral nothern Virginia’s Fauquier County, the fall colors are glorious, the wineries, plentiful, and the “Virginia is for Lovers” 9-acre maze at the family-owned Cows-n-Corn is a must see.

On a drive down the east coast through the Carolinas and Georgia, get off the interstate for a trip down side roads through a countryside dotted with picturesque rural towns. Tucked in and among them are many small, family-run corn mazes. On a larger scale, just minutes outside of Charleston, S.C., in Mt. Pleasant, take on the challenge of the largest corn maze in the southeast, this year in the shape of an 8-acre scarecrow, on the grounds of historic Boone Hall Farms, which also offers interesting guided tours of America’s oldest working plantation.  

Even Florida has corn mazes!  There are a couple just beyond the Georgia border in small, rural, north Florida towns, and a even a few near sprawling Orlando, home of Disney World, in the horse country of Ocala and around the vineyards of Mt. Dora. 

Corn mazes are plentiful throughout the Midwest.  Minnesota, with huge family farms, boasts some of the largest.  This year, in Ohio, always in the forefront of national politics, even the corn mazes get into the act!  Outside of Toledo, at the Butterfly House, Sarah America is a 16-acre corn maze in the image of the Republican Vice-presidential candidate!  Believe it or not, another political corn maze cropped up on CNN’s website on October 14, 2008, just days after this article was published.  What a great get-out-to-vote from Oregon!

On the west coast, the vast, fertile valleys of California are loaded with farms, big and small, with open-to-the-publice pumpkin patches, a myriad of fall farm activities, and some wonderful corn mazes.  Cool Patch Pumpkins in Dixon, 25 miles out of Sacramento, boasts the largest corn maze in the world, over 40 acres!  In Fresno, midway between Sacramento and Los Angeles, the maze at historic Cobb Ranch, leads you on 2 ½ miles of “twists, turns and trailers.”

All over the country, corn mazes are the centerpieces of fall festivals featuring everything from treasure hunts to Halloween events; mini mazes and farm animals; hay wagons and hay pyramids; pumpkin patches, farm-fresh picnics, and country stores. 

This fall, wherever you travel, get lost in an amazing maze!   Be sure to catch them during October, or by November, they’ll be cut down!

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