Biggest Corn Maze

 

Mazes have a tendency to stick in our minds.  Perhaps it has something to do with that in the pit of your stomach feeling you get when you are lost in the maze, that breathless excitement that seems to come from the thought that you have no clue where you are and no clue how to get to a place where you do know where you are.  In The Shining, the end scene when Jack Nicholson is chasing the mother and child through the maze until he eventually gets lost and freezes to death, giving his family room to escape, shows how frightening a maze can be.  In the fourth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where for the final challenge in the Triwizard Tournament, Harry must make it through a haunted, bewitched maze filled with giant spiders, horrible spells, and dangerous curses.  The reason these scenes were so great is because of the lost sense of panic and foreboding that came with them.

This has been replicated in a way that is a little bit less threatening, but just as much fun and exciting as it was in our favorite books and movies.  Corn mazes have a little bit of American mythos behind them.  There is something about running through corn, with the leaves on the stalks brushing against your shoulders as you walk by that is kind of frightening.  Think of all of the movies about the creepy things that happen in corn fields.  They are a great place for people to hide, and they are a great place for things to hide as well.  Ultimately, corn mazes are a quintessentially American way to have fun in the Autumn time.  Corn mazes have become a popular Halloween pasttime because they are somewhat thrilling and can induce some mild panic and anxiety (but in a fun way, like roller coasters).  And as people have gotten better at creating corn mazes, the corn mazes have gotten even more elaborate, with elaborate design images that can be seen from the sky.

The Biggest Corn Mazes in the U.S.

The biggest corn maze is a difficult thing to quantify.  First of all, what do you measure?  The distance of the pathways within the maze?  The overall square acreage of the maze?  If so, how narrow must the path be, how close together can everything be?  Because of this, it's difficult to really gauge what the largest ones are from year to year, as the maze owners try and one-up one another annually.

As far as designs go, this one is a local favorite.  It isn't an advertisement, it still looks to be a pretty tough maze, and it still has a really creative design to it.  This is from Adventure Acres, a farm that sits outside of Dayton, Ohio.  Dayton is the city where the first ever airplanes were built, and is also a major crossroads for a lot of transportation and train networks, hence the transport theme.  This is actually four separate mazes that have 8.5 miles worth of maze trail moving through them, and is the largest corn maze in Ohio, coming in at over 62 acres.  Adventure Acres, for those in the Midwest, also offers a haunted hay ride and has a pumpkin patch.  It also has the enormously tempting corn cannons, which are exactly as awesome as they sound.  Have you ever wanted to shoot an ear of corn nearly 500 yards?  You probably do now, right?  With a great overall design and a number of different family-friendly options, this corn maze, while still new, is considered to be one of the best in the United States.

The current Guinness Book of World Records holder is the Maze in Dixon, California, which is a 45 acre maze that stretches on for miles.  That maze, which is shown above, also has a number of stop stations, including a Ford Motors Station, a Ducati Station, and a Starbucks Station.

This maze, like many others, offers the coordinates of the entry point, and coordinates of the exit point.  This makes it so that people who bring a GPS with them into the maze can use that GPS to find their way through the corn.  This is becoming increasingly popular, but still rather difficult, method of getting through the maze.  Most of these mazes have several miles worth of pathways that one can get lost in, and as a result, it can be difficult to find your way without a cell phone and some help.  Most of these corn mazes also tend to go for a specific prearranged design.  Corn can be planted relatively close together, and in the case of most of these corn mazes, they are planted close enough so that there aren't noticeably distinct rows.  There is just a sprawling mass of corn that then has the path cut into it.  This path is what you must navigate.  Because of the uniqueness of this layout, many mazes choose to have a particular shape that you can make out from above.  As you can see, the large on in the picture above is mostly a geometrical design.

This design, for example, is clearly designed after the Verizon Wireless "can you hear me now?" guy.  You can see at the bottom that there is a maze that says "America's Most Reliable Wireless Network."  Now, I've read that this is actually a larger maze than the one in California, and is in Nebraska, but it's not clear if this has been confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records.  Based on acreage, it is still smaller than Dayton, Ohio's, Adventure Acres, but it is still unclear exactly how the biggest corn maze is measured according to Guinness standards.  As you can see, this maze has a similar pattern through most of it, and as such, may be easier and or more difficult to navigate.  When you are in a corn maze, curves and bends can make it harder to keep track of your actual direction, while right angles and straightaways will make it easier to have a general idea of where you have turned and where you will end up.

There are bound to be some corn mazes near you, but these are some of the best you can find.  Making a trip to Dayton to see the biggest corn maze in Ohio is well worth it.

Add Your Comments about Adventure Acres: