Ohio/Corn mazes

Corn mazes dot the rural landscape around Ohio every fall. The mazes and their paths can be mapped, perhaps to enable routing through them^[1] but more likely to impress viewers of OSM-based maps. No one else bothers to capture such a quirky level of local detail.

How to map

Tag the field as landuse=farmland, tourism=attraction, attraction=maze, and crop=corn, plus name=* and website=* if applicable. Note that, although most corn mazes reappear in the same spot year after year, some change locations each year due to crop rotation.

Mapping the individual paths within the corn maze is more difficult, primarily because the design typically changes each year and current aerial imagery is difficult to come by. (On the other hand, outdated aerial imagery of corn mazes makes it easy to date imagery for the surrounding region.) Consider contacting the owner of the farm on social media or by other means, asking for permission to use the imagery as the basis for an updated map. (The farmer may be happy to find out that their farm is on a map in the first place.) Then tag each path as highway=footway (or highway=path) and surface=grass.

Dating aerial imagery

Corn mazes provide a reliable way of dating the surrounding area's aerial imagery down to the season, since the maze design changes every year and is most clearly visible in the Fall. Here are imagery dates based on corn mazes throughout Southwest Ohio and the Miami Valley as of February 2018: