With nearly 2 miles of befuddling pathways, the Heartland
Country Corn Maze near Sioux Falls, S.D., will likely
attract thousands of customers between now and
Halloween-each paying $4 to $6. We say "thousands" of
customers because Heartland's creators won't divulge exact
numbers.
"We aren't quitting our day jobs," says Gaylon Johnson, who
designed, built and runs the maze with his wife, Vicki, and
partners Bob and Karen Sproul. "But this has been an OK
part-time thing."
The same may well be said for the up to 100 corn mazes built
into fields around the country this year. This is the 10th
anniversary of the first corn maze, created by Broadway
producer Don Frantz in Pennsylvania in 1993. He had been
inspired while flying over field after field and noting
their beauty. He also was familiar with mazes that have been
created for centuries in England using hedges.
Frantz turned his production capabilities into a 3 1/2-acre dinosaur that first year and later created the
American Maze Co., which is headquartered near Times Square
in New York. The company designs and produces up to 10 mazes
internationally each year, seven of them this year in the
U.S.
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"We're very up front with people about the risk involved,"
says Laurie Branum, spokeswoman for the American Maze Co.
"Some invest $30,000, some $120,000; it depends on where you
are."
Ideally mazes are located near metro areas, in tourist
communities, in places where there are lots of young people
or somewhere with a combination of all three.
"It's all about marketing and getting the press," says
Branum. "And that's tough because now mazes are in a
downturn. The press has already seen them."
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So far that hasn't been the case for the Heartland Country
Corn Maze. "It's surprising-we get more bookings every year
(for youth and adult groups)," says Gaylon Johnson. (The
maze is now in its fourth year of operation.)
The Johnsons and Sprouls, all farmers, don't use any outside
help to design or create their mazes. And unlike a lot of
mazes, they don't have a tower where someone can watch over
the entire maze at a glance. Each participant is given a map
of the maze that shows locations of mailboxes within. The
mailboxes contain trivia questions and help visitors find
the next mailbox.
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The Johnsons and Sprouls plan their mazes the year before.
They then do a drawing and transfer the drawing to graph
paper, with so many boxes equaling so many rows of corn.
Following that plan, they begin cutting the maze into the
corn as soon as the crop is up several inches. "I bet we're
at it two and a half weeks," Johnson says of the cutting.
Their maze opens at the end of July and continues Thursdays
through Sundays from noon to 10 p.m. Evening customers can
bring flashlights to tour the maze or use the ones provided
by Heartland.
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As for how the business is run, the two couples created
what's known as a subchapter S Corporation for the maze
business. "It separates us from the farm," says Johnson.
From there it was a matter of getting a sales tax license as
well as purchasing liability insurance.
The 5 1/2-acre Heartland maze is at the large end of such creations.
Branum says the American Maze Co. discourages people from
creating mazes larger than 6 acres. "We try to make them
understand they don't want an 8-acre maze in the summer
heat, in the middle of a field hardly shaded at all. A
6-acre maze is about 2 1/2 miles of trail."