Farms across the country have built their fall corn mazes this year around America’s 250th birthday. Patriotic designs are growing in live cornfields from Pennsylvania to Minnesota to West Texas, with opening dates running from July through mid-September. One Kentucky family farm built two mazes for the milestone, and the second one asks visitors to imagine American agriculture 250 years from now.
Cartoon characters, video games and pop culture tie-ins have filled these cornfields for years, with farms picking a new theme every season. The semiquincentennial gave them a subject that won’t come around again for another 250 years, and each farm took it in a different direction. Some built patriotic portraits meant to be seen from the air, and others created experiences visitors solve on foot.
America 250 designs span 8 states
The designs range from 5-acre interactive trails to 30-acre installations visible from passing aircraft. Treworgy Family Orchards in Levant, Maine, a four-time winner of USA Today’s 10Best national corn maze award, built its tribute this season around a bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell across four acres of 60,000 cornstalks.
Valley Corn Maize in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, dedicated all 30 of its acres to the America 250 logo and all six branches of the U.S. military, opening Sept. 12. In South Dakota, Heartland Country Corn Maze near Harrisburg designed an 11-acre bald eagle perched atop an “America 250” sign for its 27th season. Stony Hill Farms in Chester, New Jersey, built its maze around “NJ 250,” tying the state’s own 250th anniversary to the national celebration.
Richardson Adventure Farm in Spring Grove, Illinois, runs what it calls the world’s largest corn maze. The design covers 28 acres with 9.7 miles of trail, depicting three signers of the Declaration of Independence, a bald eagle above a 13-starred early American flag and fireworks streaming from a star bearing the numerals “250.” Idaho-based design company MazePlay created the layout, and the farm opens Sept. 12 alongside a renovated 1876-era octagon barn on the property, a structure the farm says was built exactly 100 years after the Declaration was signed.
Cherry Crest Adventure Farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a past winner of USA Today’s national top corn maze award, titled its five-acre America 250 design “Let Freedom Ring.” Visitors follow nearly 2.5 miles of winding paths through interactive checkpoints honoring national symbols and traditions. Near Lubbock, Texas, At’l Do Farms opens Sept. 12 with an America 250 design.
2 farms built mazes you solve, not just walk
According to local reporting from LEX18, Middle Springs Farm in Paris, Kentucky, is running two mazes simultaneously for the semiquincentennial. The Bourbon County family farm’s main corn maze traces 250 years of American agriculture from 1776 to today through educational stations covering milestones in farming history, while a separate sorghum-sudangrass maze asks visitors to imagine what the industry might look like in 2276. Both are designed and cut in-house every year.
Skelly’s Farm Market in Janesville, Wisconsin, took a different direction entirely with its 2026 season. The farm builds corn mazes as escape rooms, and this fall’s maze, themed “Deserted Island Escape,” sends visitors through six acres of trail with original characters called the Squashees, narrative puzzles and a real door at the exit. A custom smartphone app scales the difficulty for different age groups, and the farm’s in-house GPS lets visitors see their live position in the maze. Skelly’s won the 2025 Wisconsin Governor’s Innovation in Tourism Award for the format and has been running corn mazes since 1998, making it one of the oldest operations in the country.
Some farms planted their mazes instead of cutting them
Many corn mazes are created by planting a full field and then using GPS-guided mowers or tillers to cut the design into the standing crop. Some farms are moving to a different approach, programming the maze layout directly into the planting process so the planter skips rows where paths should be, and the field grows into the finished design.
A-Maize-ing Farms in Mayfield, Kentucky, used this approach for its “God Bless America” America 250 design. The farm told WPSD Local 6 that MazePlay, the Idaho-based design company, used a custom planter to plant the design this season. Separately, Skelly’s Farm Market says on its website that it planted its 2026 design using a neighbor’s precision planter and custom software the farm built in-house over two decades, saving seed and cutting the mowing time the traditional method requires.
Many of these farms harvest the corn for feed by winter, and the designs disappear with it. Family farms across the country used the medium they know best to mark a moment that only comes around once every 250 years, and the window to walk through their work runs from now through late October.
Mandy is a luxury travel, fine dining and bucket-list-adventure journalist with expert insight from 47 countries. She uncovers unforgettable experiences around the world and brings them to life through immersive storytelling that blends indulgence, culture and discovery, and shares them with a global audience as co-founder of Food Drink Life. Her articles appear on MSN and through the Associated Press wire in major U.S. outlets, including NBC, the Daily News, Boston Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times and many more.
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