When Hurds Family Farm in Ulster County’s Modena built its first corn maze roughly a quarter of a century ago, it was one of the first in the area. Today these fall attractions abound. There are at least 15 in the Hudson Valley, and they draw thousands to the region’s pick-your-own apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and farms every year.
The appeal is simple: Farms and orchards cut intricate designs into their cornfields and invite tourists to get lost — and found — in the stalks. Designs change from year to year, and are often agriculture-themed, featuring pictures of tractors, berries, and apple trees. Sometimes, the mazes are more topical, and other times, more seasonal. This year, Hurds’ maze will feature the I Love NY logo. In 2020, Fishkill Farms in Hopewell Junction cut the message “Reject Racism” into its corn maze, and for this year, it reflects the fall favorite that is cider.
A good corn maze has become a must for any agritourism business, says Charles Hurd, who manages Hurds Family Farm. “It’s the baseline,” he says. “There are always going to be people who have never experienced a corn maze before. If you don’t have a corn maze, people aren’t going to come [to your farm].”
Reports credit Don Frantz, a creative director who had worked on Broadway and the Super Bowl halftime show, with creating the first corn maze in 1993 in a Pennsylvania cornfield. The idea came to him while flying over a cornfield in an airplane, and he tapped a British designer to carve a dinosaur into the corn, called the Amazing Maize Maze.
Inspired by Frantz, Brett Herbst rented a piece of land in American Fork, Utah, in 1996 and created his own corn maze. Today, he designs roughly 220 U.S. corn mazes each year through his company, The MAiZE, which takes him all over the country. He said corn mazes offer people a brief respite from the fast-paced modern world. “People want to escape that and go do something organic and real,” he said.
The Hurds have been farming in the Hudson Valley for 160 years. Three decades ago, the family established Hurds Family Farm, its agritourism operation, to provide financial stability. “Wholesale is a roller-coaster,” Hurd says. “You have good years and bad years.” Without agritourism, he adds, “you wouldn’t have as many farms in the Hudson Valley.”
The 2-acre corn maze is just one of the many fun fall activities at Hurds Family Farm, which offers apple and pumpkin picking. There’s also a bounce pillow, a zipline, a playground with a 20-foot slide, farm animals, duck racing, a cow train, and more. “One hundred years ago, you could have a stick and a hoop and play with that all day,” Hurd says. “With attention spans now, you need a lot of activities.”
Fishkill Farms, which in the fall offers apple, pumpkin, flower, and raspberry picking, created its first corn maze in 2017. The piece of land looked like a whale, so the farm cut a whale with “our farm name a heart” into the corn, according to Katie Ross, Fishkill’s marketing, communications, and events manager.
Fishkill added the 1-acre corn maze in response to customer demand. “We’re a working farm,” Ross says. “We don’t have a haunted house. We don’t have a petting zoo. We’re a more traditional orchard, but we wanted to add to the fun of the farm and meet the needs of our customers in a way that was a little more natural. So we added a corn maze.”
Modern technology has made it easier to cut corn mazes — and to see them from above. Hurds uses a drone to photograph its corn maze from above. Fishkill uses GPS to guide the riding mower that cuts the design created by the farm’s owner.
In 2012, Samascott Orchards in Kinderhook built a new market, Samascott’s Garden Market, and decided the field behind it would be a good spot for a 7-acre corn maze. The maze contains eight hidden stations, each with a different hole punch that corresponds with icons on a ticket. If a customer finds all eight stations, they receive a free small soft-serve ice cream or $1 off hard ice cream.
“We thought we’d try it because we were growing corn anyway,” Jake Samascott says. “In the first year, people loved it. It’s gotten busier and busier. We can’t not do it. We’d get yelled at if we didn’t do it.”
