For four years strange shapes have been appearing as summer ends in a cornfield 6 miles south of Tiger Stadium. These shapes have ranged from a crawfish to Mike the Tiger, and from September to November they are filled with wanderers, searching for a way out of “the Maize.”
Donald Courville, a farmer for more than 30 years, took the idea for a cornfield maze from a similar maze he found in Shreveport.
“It’s becoming popular around the world,” Courville said. “There’s a cornfield maze in every state of the union, even Hawaii.”
This year’s design is a scarecrow with the words “If I only had a brain,” below.
Courville said he gets designs for the maze from a Utah company called The Maize Maze, which creates designs for 140 similar puzzles in North America.
Courville then painstakingly cuts an 8.5-acre cornfield into the design by hand.
“It takes about two weeks,” Courville said. “It’s around 9 acres, but when we’re done the maze seems like 40.”
Courville said the appeal of the cornfield is its family-oriented environment.
“We provide good, wholesome fun,” Courville said.”But at the same time, people are learning.”
Courville said the maze has installed “passports,” to make the maze more interesting. These markers ask questions that, correctly answered, will lead customers out of the maze.
“We have them strategically placed throughout the maze, and there are several different categories to choose from,” Courville said. “Sports, scripture, agriculture, even Boy Scout questions.”
Luke Fritchie has worked at the cornfield maze since it opened and said navigating the maze is easy, if someone knows what he is doing.
“If you don’t have a good sense of direction, it could take you a long time,” Fritchie said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, being outside at night and truly lost.”
Katie Fritchie, who works as a “corn cop,” a worker who makes sure everything in the maze is running smoothly, said her favorite part of working on the maze is “haunting” patrons at night.
“Around Halloween, the maze becomes haunted at night,” Courville said. “We try to scare people with different scenarios every time. There are some people who come out of the maze during Halloween and their pants aren’t always dry.”
Katie Rassinier, a sociology and anthropology sophomore, said she went to the maze last year.
“It was difficult,” Rassinier said. “It was dark and scary, kind of like ‘The Shining’ except no Jack Nicholson.”
An estimated 25,000 people visit the maze every year, 40 to 50 percent of whom are college-aged, Courville said.
This year, Courville has expanded some of the activities beyond just wandering through the maze.
Outside the maze are corn cannons, which shoot corn at objects with compressed air. The targets range from the likings of Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden, he said.
The cornfield maze also features “backseat driving,” which pits patrons behind the wheel of a golf cart blindfolded, forcing them to navigate an obstacle course only by the direction of the passenger in the cart.
“We time the drivers,” Courville said. “So if they hit anything or go off course, they lose time.”
Baton Rouge’s cornfield maze opens Sept. 20 and closes Nov. 30. The maze is located 6 miles south of Tiger Stadium on Nicholson Drive (Hwy. 30) and is open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. The maze becomes “haunted” at night from Oct. 27-31.
Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for children.