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                              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 [1] on the west
coast of Florida.

[2] In 1980 I received a free road atlas from the AAA [3] 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 [4] 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. [5] 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 [6] 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 [7]. Very odd.

Looking further, I found out that Andytown existed after all [8] 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).

[1] http://www.naples-florida.com/
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2001/10/29/andytown.png
[3] http://www.aaa.com/
[4] http://www.springdew.com/
[5] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Andytown%2C+FL
[6] http://www.randmcnally.com/
[7] http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapsurfer?infact=2&outfact=2&act=move&on=CITIES&on=majroads&on=streets&on=interstate&on=statehwy&on=ushwy&tlevel=-&tvar=-&tmeth=i&mlat=26.125&mlon=-80.375&msym=redpin&mlabel=Andytown&murl=&lat=26.12500&lon=-80.37500&wid=0.050&ht=0.130&conf=mapnew.con
[8] http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/fl/andytown.html

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