The
Mesilla Valley Maze
The Mesilla Valley Maze is a
project that NMSU Surveying Engineering students help design and survey every
year. Located in a cornfield on Highway
70 (Picacho Avenue) in the community of Fairacres (just outside the city limits
of Las Cruces, New Mexico), about one mile west of the Rio Grande River, the
maze has been a fixture since 1999.
Some of the proceeds from the profits of the maze are used to fund the
Mesilla Valley Maze Scholarship, a $500 scholarship given to a NMSU Surveying
Engineering student each fall. Other proceeds are being used to build up the
scholarship fund so that eventually it can become endowed as a permanent
scholarship at NMSU.
The maze normally opens in
mid-September and runs until the end of October. This means that the corn is planted late (usually in the weeks
after the 4th of July holiday).
Students and volunteers use Real Time Kinematic (RTK) Global
Positioning System (GPS) satellite surveying technology to layout the
design. The best time to lay out the
design is when the corn is between ankle and knee high. On occasion, delays in laying out the design
have meant working in hot, humid, shoulder-high corn.
The first year, we cut the
maze by hand. This was a lot of work,
even though the maze only covered about three acres of land. Although students were only involved with
designing and surveying the maze, the maze people spent a lot of hot, hard work
maintaining the maze by hand until opening day. This meant hand cutting new growth and weeds and hand rotor
tilling the pathways to keep them open. The following year, the size of the
maze was expanded to almost 10 acres.
Working with the maze people, they asked that the maze design
accommodate using a tractor and disc to cut and maintain the pathways. This meant that the design now had to
consider such things as the width (which was 7 feet wide) and the turning
radius (which was about 6 feet) of the tractor. With these constraints, the paths were much more easily
maintained. The limiting factor was how
“fancy” the design could be. Sharp
corners would still need to have some maintenance by hand.
NMSU Surveying Engineering
students and local surveyors have volunteered to survey the maze. Local surveying firm Diamondback Surveys and
local development company Sonoma Ranch Development have been especially helpful
in loaning students GPS equipment with which to survey the maze. The City of Las Cruces has also participated
by allowing students to borrow GPS equipment.
Skyline Engineering of Santa Teresa allowed students to borrow GPS
equipment during the 1999 survey. The
local Bureau of Land Management, Cadastral Surveys Division has also made GPS
equipment available, although there has been no need to use it to date. Today, the NMSU Department of Surveying
Engineering has its own RTK GPS but still uses local surveyors and their GPS
equipment to speed up the survey.
1999 – The
Sesquicentennial maze
The Sesquicentennial maze
was a part of the celebration of the 150th birthday of the City of
Las Cruces. One of the maze
originators, George Newman, a retired graphic designer and co-owner of the
Guacamole Restaurant located next door to the maze, had designed the official
City of Las Cruces Sesquicentennial logo, which was used from everything from
city documents to the banner of the local newspaper. Dr. Steve Frank and student James Aguirre digitized the logo
using a Summagraphics digitizing table and AutoCad software. Next, pathways were designed at a minimum of
6 feet wide (wide enough for two people to pass in opposite directions). The chiles that form the “burst” around the
zero in “150” proved to be the greatest challenge in surveying and cutting
out. Starting when the corn was almost
waist-high, it grew to shoulder high as we surveyed in over 1,000 points in the
maze. The maze occupied only a corner
of the field, about 3 acres. Hand
cutting to maintain the maze became a serious problem, though not one that
affected students.
2000 – The Curly Cow maze
The Curly Cow maze design
came out of weeks of frustration.
Having decided on using a picture of a cow, we tried several times to
design a maze using photographs of cows.
Nothing succeeded. George Newman
again used his artistic talents to draw a cow that became the basis of the
design maze. Dr. Steve Frank and
student Justin Miller collaborated on the concept of designing circles within
the cow (with Justin doing most of the design and work). The Curly Cow has been the most challenging
maze designed to date as people literally “went around in circles” trying to
find their way through the maze. The
maze was expanded to cover 10 acres of the field, leaving about 2.5 acres for
parking.
2001 – The United States
maze
The United States maze concept
came from a conversation at a December 2000 Christmas party held by maze owners
Anna and Steve Lyles. Students Justin
Miller and Gabe Rios participated in the design, creating several designs
from which one was finally adopted. Justin and Gabe first downloaded images of
maps of the United States into AutoCad software, then traced over the map
using lines in AutoCad. The maze size
stayed at about 10 acres.
2002 – The Cornucopia
maze
The Cornucopia maze had
several students involved, including Monica Rivera, Mark Marrujo, and Arlene
Perez. Design was done by digitizing a
conceptual drawing supplied by maze owner Anna Lyles. Several modifications had to be made to get the maze to fit
within the space provided. The maze
size had been decreased from 10 to 7.5 acres in order to add more activities to
the area.
2003 – The Scarecrow maze
The Scarecrow maze, as of
the writing of this, has been designed, but the corn has yet to be
planted. Again, maze owner Anna Lyles
supplied a hand-drawn design concept.
The drawing was scanned and the scan image was put into AutoCad
software. The path centerlines for the
maze were then traced over the lines of the drawing. After the centerlines were drawn in AutoCad, the path sidelines
were offset from the centerline. Where
paths converged or did not all enough corn to separate them (normally at least
5-6 feet of corn need to separate paths), paths were redesigned. The corn planting is planned for the week
after the July 4th holiday and the survey is planned for the last
week in July.
