Some of these are probably “Copyright Easter Eggs” - fake places inserted so that if it turns up on another map, then you can tell it was copied from your map.

See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Copyright_Easter_Eggs for more info and examples of “trap street” on UK road maps.

There are copyright traps that mapmakers use so they can find if people violated copyright regulations by looking if one copies the fake areas.

I search in a few places to find where a nonexistent town in Colorado came from.

1) The USGS site
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/
Which calls what I assume is the correct Nelson a “populated place” (but hey, I’ve already corrected their database a couple of times) and

2) Lee Zion’s list of Colorado names at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~coplaces/city-no.html#ne
wherein he calls it a railroad stop.

To me, as a researcher, I like to know the exact latitude and longitude of these no longer existent places. For example, a place I’ve found interesting because it comes up in old articles is Raven, Garfield County, Colorado, which still exists, but hasn’t been known as Raven for decades. Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech there.

I also find railroad stops fascinating, such as the one near Dotsero which is spelled Orestod (Dotsero backwards).

One of my distant ancestors died in Park County on her way back to Fairplay from Denver. They took her off the train at Garo. We hunted for Garo, but without the proper coordinates, we weren’t sure we found it. Why should I care? Just curious about how far they moved her. Just wondered where she died.

Sometimes I think they still put railroad stops on maps in areas where there may not be other towns nearby. Or maybe they haven’t gotten around to removing them yet. Or maybe they do have historical significance. Anyway, it’s a fun subject to explore.

As a map field editor and publisher, I can offer several explanations (in addition to the excellent reasons already stated) for plotting these seemingly non-existent populated places.

My comments are limited to commercial maps and not official mapping. Editorial decisions on official mapping (USGS, etc) are made with a very different agenda.

1. Even though all traces of a town are gone, the name may still hold a very real significance to local inhabitants for navigational, and historical purposes. In fact, I have seen several once abandoned places become thriving communities again, using the old name, after a long period of oblivion.

2. The map publisher is simply “filling up” empty space with whatever names they can find. Many map publishers have never visited the places they map, and, as a result, they don’t really know what’s out there. Plotting EVERY name was quite common on the old Gousha (and other) national gas company road map series of the 50s and 60s. These guys made a concerted effort to find and plot old railroad sidings, water tanks, ranch headquarters, and mines; as if they were populated places. Many times, map publishers did not have a special symbol to represent this class of place, so they used the lowest class of populated place dot. Others used the tiniest type. The heirs to this cartography simply left on a lot of this unchecked detail on later maps. Much of it survives on contemporary maps to this day for that reason alone.

3. Most map publishers use the tactic in point two, and will even make up fictitious populated places, to trap copyright violators. It’s quite effective.

U.S. courts in the mid-1990s ruled that facts were not copyrightable, and that trap streets were, though false, uncopyrightable facts, so the practice is beginning to fall out of use.

See previous entry: Copyright Traps.

In the Midwestern states during the Cold War the government would have map makers put fake towns on maps or slightly move towns to confuse invaders. South Dakota finally got out all the kinks last year on their highway maps.

Ghost towns and non-existant streets on maps are a device, called a plant, employed by map publishers to stop plagarism, companies can be sued if they copy other publishers plants

Jonathan,
I suppose what follows should be posted to the “Copyright Traps” thread. Perhaps it is of some relevance here.
Will

Regarding copyright protection. Indeed, in the United States, court decisions have dramatically weakened the “sweat of the brow” defense map publishers have formerly used to seek court remedies against this unauthorized use. Frequently, successful prosecution of these depends (as these things usually do) on how much effort and expense the prosecution is willing or able to undertake. There have been several notable cases recently settled this way in the US and Europe.

However, a map publisher thinking they have been harmed by these unscrupulous actions can still have a number of other actions at their disposal to seek compensation. The map publishing and commercial cartographer community is a tight-knit group of people. Once a copyright violation can be demonstrated in the marketplace, the violator can be exposed. If word spreads, the violator could be ostracised. Much of this is self-policing.

A lot of copyright violation is done by companies and individuals not normally occupied with the publishing of maps. I am frequently contacted by individuals wishing to copy maps at their local copy shop. The copy shop staff has told these people that it is their policy for the individual to get written approval for this. The individual will contact me and I treat each decision on a case-by-case basis, and in writing. EVERY case of copying must be investigated and decided, in writing. If not, whatever copyright protection we do have for that product, will be lost.

When matters do go to a bargaining table, mediation or even litigation, trap information is still a very powerful, and acceptable way of proving the violation occured.

Similar to Catholicgauze’s comment: When I was stationed at Giebelstadt Army Airfield south of Wurzburg Germany, the story was that this was a Me-262 (jet fighter) base during WWII, and that Hitler had the nearby village of Giebelstadt removed from maps to help hide the airfield.

Mapping companies usually add fictious Towns or Streets to their maps (depending on scale) as a form of copywright protection. This becomes very amusing do to the large instance of plagarism in the mapping community. Maps are very expensive to produce, so it is much cheaper to steal one and rebrand it.