Why Mapmakers Put Fake Towns on Their Maps in the 1920s — and the One That Became Real

Why Mapmakers Put Fake Towns on Their Maps in the 1920s — and the One That Became Real Open Culture readers may know John Green best for Crash Course, the YouTube channel that teaches everything you need to know about subjects like world history, U.S. history, big history, literature, and philosophy. Or at least it teaches everything a teenage student facing down the prospect of Advanced Placement subject exams needs to know. Such viewers have always had a decent chance of knowing Green as the author of novels for young readers like Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, and Paper Towns. That last takes its title from just the kind of historical phenomenon that would in any case have fascinated Green, in his capacity as a vlogger, enough to inspire a video: the wholly fictional settlements created by mapmakers in order to expose cartographic plagiarists. Green discusses one such paper town in the episode of Vlogbrothers, the long-running channel Green runs

Added 2 Aug 2026