March 25th, 2014, Minneapolis. Kevin Hoffman is sitting at his desk in the

newsroom of City Pages, a local Alt Weekly.

Every morning I would wake up and I would check Twitter and Reddit and various sources.

At the time, they were a lot more friendly and amusing. This was in the golden age of

social media let's just say. And on that particular morning as I looked at

Reddit I saw this post from Bob in

Minnesota Bob and Mid and he basically said look what I found on Google Maps.

So Kevin looked it was an aerial view of a forest that had been cut into a very

particular shape, the shape of the state of Minnesota. It's kind of instantly recognizable.

You see the outline of Minnesota that you're so used to seeing on the maps

except for it's green and made up of trees.

Kevin looks closer.

The image was a little blurry, so he had his suspicions.

I mean nowadays, of course, we'd immediately suspect

AI or artificial intelligence.

But this was 10 years ago.

And so at the time, it was just,

when someone actually faked this in Photoshop,

it's pretty grainy.

And so I saw it, and of course, being a newspaper Minnesota I said I have to investigate this I have to

through whether this is true or not

I'm Amanda McGowan and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and

...