Okay. Okay. I’m still not over this, but I’m starting to piece it together in my head.
This is NOT an accurate telling of the history of corn mazes. This is just a hypothesis.
So. What do we need for a corn maze? Well, we need cornfields, and we need the concept of a vegetation maze.
Hedge mazes are a European concept, first created in the mid 16th century.
And while indigenous Americans obviously had corn, they typically grew it alongside other plants and not in vast monocultures.
And so corn mazes can only exist after the widespread adoption of maize by Europeans AND the existence of hedge mazes.
But during this time, is a corn maze a good idea?
A corn maze isn’t something you make on a whim. It’s something that has to planned well in advance— and not only that, but with every path you draw, you’re losing some of your crop! And if you’re a farmer, that’s your entire livelihood! While the wealthy elite can afford to splurge on a purely decorative plant to make a maze from, you certainly can’t do the same with your product.
So a field with a maze needs to somehow bring in more money than a field without a maze to be worth considering. How does that happen?
Agritourism only works as a concept when most of the population doesn’t already live on a farm. There’s no reason to draw people to your farm in colonial America, where 90% of everyone there sees a farm every day.
So this rules out any year before 1900 on principle alone.
Not only that, but to earn any actual revenue, you need a lot of middle and even lower-class people from cities and towns actually coming to your farm specifically. This isn’t feasible without the widespread adoption of the automobile.
And so corn mazes can only exist after 1920.
But why would anyone in 1920 focus on agritourism? The added costs of labor, advertising, and crop loss would far outweigh any revenue gained. The vast majority of family farmers were doing fine without it!
As farming became more consolidated by massive corporations, family farms were suddenly seeing less and less money. All of a sudden, agritourism became a viable option. If you aren’t making that much money off of your crops in the first place, then it doesn’t matter too much if you hack them up a bit.
And when do we see a significant dip in the profits of family farms?
A large dip in 1975, and a nearly vertical slope around 1989.
Now the idea of a corn maze is a feasible one. Especially when the pressure to create new, novel experiences in your farm starts really packing on near the turn of the decade.
Corn mazes can only exist after 1989.
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
origamiaround
vaporwave
pixelskylines
areudirty
