Monday, October 29, 2001
Andytown, Florida
Welcome to ANDYTOWN, FLORIDA!
Population: 500
GATEWAY to the West! Next stop, 87 miles.
Please don't feed the aligators. Thank you.
Non-existant sign for a non-existant city at the intersection of US-27 and Aligator Alley (now I-75) linking South Florida to Naples on the west coast of Florida.
In 1980 I received a free road atlas from the AAA as a promotion. I was 11 at the time,
and right at the corner of Aligator Alley and US 27 was a small town with
the amusing name of Andytown. I always wanted to visit the place
as a kid, it being so close and all, but never did get a chance to. By the
time I got a car in 1989 it was apparent that such a town never did exist,
since in the 10 years I had been living in South Florida I had never heard
mention of this town, but by then, I had heard that map makers usually add
non-existant objects to maps in order to “copy protect” their maps.
A few days ago I told Spring this, and she found it amusing. I figured that since I have nothing else to write about, I might as well write about the copy protection mark that is Andytown, Florida.
As I was making the entry, I thought it might be fun to do a Google search for Andytown. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting the town to actually exist! There are a lot of map sites offering to sell maps of Andytown and my thought was Boy, Rand McNally is going to great lengths to promote a town that doesn't exist. Spring thought that many people had the same map and thought that the town actually existed. Most of the information I had pointed to 26°07′30″ N, 80°22′30″ W. Very odd.
Looking further, I found out that Andytown existed after all but was demolished in 1979 to make way for the expansion of Alligator Alley, which may explain why I never heard of it (as I moved to South Florida in 1979).
