It was a brutally hot day in mid-June and my Editor had assigned me to cover a contentious meeting in Sullivan County, which was only accessible from where I resided by traversing through the heart of the Catskills. The hand-cranked windows were rolled down in my old rusting Dodge Neon as I cruised through the jagged, paranoia inducing twisty turns of the road.
After many miles of this, the twisty road emptied into a curious little place called Roscoe (pictured right), which features shops and store fronts that more resemble a gold rush town in Alaska than anything in New York. The town's wide Main Street with a luscious mountain behind it sure was inviting, but the meeting in Sullivan County was calling.
Very little was inviting three hours later, as the emotion infused meeting and the rising temperature prompted me to return back towards my familiar confines in the Schoharie Valley as quickly as possible. My second drive through Roscoe was still pleasant yet lacked the same luster as the inaugural voyage.
All these months later and Roscoe is barely interesting to me when compared to its neighboring little town of Agloe, which doesn't actually exist. Featured in one of John Green's many books, Agloe is a paper town that was created by a map-maker as form of proof against forgers.
Except it actually (and very briefly) was a town.
Some enterprising fellow decided to open a convenience store at the dusty, empty crossroads that had been named "Agloe" on the map, thus bringing the fictitious town to life. This carried on for some time, but almost as soon as it came into being the little town disappeared once more into the dustbin of history.
Although the prominence of Green's books, and his tag-along films, have brought attention to the bizarre existence of paper towns, including Agloe, the non-existent totally existent fragment of map making lore and history fits almost too perfectly with the character of the Catskills as a whole... Almost like it belonged there.
Read more about Agloe and paper towns at NPR.
