Left, right, right, left — dead end! Oh no! Try again.
Fall is the season for getting lost in corn mazes. Those courses are cut into cornfields. People head in and wind through, searching for the exit. In 2022, some maze makers got creative with their designs.
Jackson Farm’s corn maze opened on September 24 in Black Rock, Arkansas. This year, the maze is based on the movie Jurassic Park. Seen from above, Jurassic Farm’s paths take the shape of dinosaurs. The maze even has dino sound effects!
Bill Jackson is a co-owner of the farm. He told News-O-Matic about choosing a theme. “We’ll do an one sometimes,” he said. “Last year was ‘Hometown Heroes.’ We honored the people who worked through the pandemic.” The team decided the next maze should have a lighter topic. “So the theme became ‘Jurassic Farm,’” Jackson said.
After that, the work began. The Jackson Farm team got a design for a Jurassic corn maze. They made some tweaks to fit their field. “Then, I grow the corn and count the rows,” Jackson said. Workers from a maze company use those rows. They follow a to mark the design with paint in the field. “It must be in secret code,” Jackson joked. “I couldn’t figure it out.”
Next, “another guy comes with a chemical that will kill corn and grass,” Jackson explained. “He kills the corn, and that makes a perfect path.” Jackson said he’s “amazed how good of a job they do.”
In Columbia, Missouri, a corn maze became a video game. Shryock’s Corn Maze is based on the arcade classic Pac-Man. The design features the super-hungry Pac-Man. And some of the game’s ghosts are there too!
A maze in Foley, Minnesota, may be the mightiest of all. “We had the field and looked at what the world record was,” said Brad Chmielewski from Stoney Brook Farms. “We thought we could almost double it, so we did!” Chmielewski told News-O-Matic that the maze covers 110 acres. The current Guinness world record holder is 60 acres.
Foley’s giant maze features horror movie . It is so big that it’s hard to get a picture of the whole maze, even while flying! People won’t get too lost in the maze though. They can use a map on their phones!
The giant maze doesn’t officially have the record. But it’s getting a lot of attention. “We did it to put our farm and Foley on the map,” Chmielewski said. “We appreciate all the support and are super-excited about welcoming people this fall!”
Updated October 13, 2022, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Ashley Morgan
