Deep in one of the world's largest corn mazes, where tri-tip sandwiches and soft-serve ice cream bought at the concession stand have become a memory and all you can see in any direction are paths of land and dead-end walls of Green plants rustle in the breeze, people tend to reveal themselves.
From humble beginnings with a not-very-impressive pumpkin patch two decades ago, a farming family in this Solano County town decided to take up the corn maze game, hoping to have some seasonal fun and make a little extra money. And then, fueled by kitschy ambition and the creative use of Excel spreadsheets, Dixon's Cooley family made it big. Really big.
His Cool Patch Pumpkins corn maze has caused traffic jams on Interstate 80. It has sparked a frenzy of 911 calls to the Solano County Sheriff's Department from people who find themselves lost in the maze. It has twice held a Guinness World Record as the world's largest corn maze. And in doing so, it has become “a big part” of the farm's income, according to Tayler Cooley, despite the large acreage the family farms year-round.
Over the years, the maze has also served as a towering 60-acre human psychology experiment.
“You can learn a lot” about a person from how they behave in a corn maze, said Brett Herbst, who said he built the first one west of the Mississippi in 1996, and now has a company, Maize, that designs and builds . each of them falls to farmers across the country. (Cool Patch is not one of their clients.)
Minions created from hay bales greet drivers on the way to Cool Patch Pumpkins in Dixon.
(Héctor Amezcua / The Sacramento Bee)
It turns out that some people approach a silly seasonal activity like they would an Olympic race: speed is the goal. They grip their paper maps with clenched fingers and fierce concentration. They jump around the corners of the corn, barely avoiding the small children. Woe to anyone in your group who wants to rest!
Others like to wander. They spin back and forth across the crunchy 10-foot stems, laughing when they get lost and stopping to chat, snack, and take selfies atop the four skybridges that connect different parts of the maze.
Sit quietly among the ears of corn and it will be easy to spot who is who:
“Guys, pick up the pace,” a young woman from UC Davis shouted to her classmates as they ran by on a recent afternoon, explaining that they were running against another group and couldn't stop to talk.
Compare that to Amari Moore, 22, of Sacramento, who was taking a long break on one of the bridges. “I'm getting a little tired,” he said.
And then (and there's no nice way to say it) there are the cheaters. These are the people who, desperate for an honest way out, simply smash and pound the corn, whether they want to or not.
Or those who lose all hope of escape and, in a panic, call 911 to request rescue from sheriff's deputies. (Dispatchers tend to advise waiting for help from the scene or taking the cheater's route.)
“You can learn a lot” about a person from how they behave in a corn maze, says professional corn maze designer Brett Herbst.
(Tayler Cooley)
Labyrinths and labyrinths have been around for thousands of years. In Greek mythology, the Minotaur, with the head of a bull and the body of a man, was imprisoned in the center of a labyrinth in Crete and ate anyone who could not find the way out. Theseus managed to kill the Minotaur, but still needed the help of a princess to escape.
The farming town of Dixon, population 19,000, made its mark on mazes about 20 years ago, around the time corn mazes began taking off across the United States thanks to new computer programming that helps farmers to trace enormous labyrinths with a sinuous network of passageways.
Matt Cooley, a second-generation pecan, tomato, sunflower, wheat and alfalfa farmer, decided to grow some pumpkins for Halloween and sell them on the side of the road. Then, someone gave him the idea of creating a labyrinth.
The Cool Patch Maze, which rises from the plains near Interstate 80 just before the Sacramento Valley reaches the Vaca Mountains, grew larger and more creative. Tayler Cooley, Matt's daughter-in-law, is the designer. Each year has a theme. This year, the words “A house divided will not stand” are carved into the corn, along with “God bless America.” Is it a commentary on the upcoming elections and the country's deeply divided electorate?
“This year we encourage our visitors and society as a whole to come together for the good of our nation,” the Cooley family explains on the Cool Patch website.
In recent years, the farm has also become famous for a symbol that people can get behind regardless of their political persuasion: the henchmen from the “Despicable Me” film franchise. In recent years, one of the farm's employees, Juan Ramirez, has created giant minions out of hay bales that are visible from the highway.
Some scholars believe that labyrinths embody paradoxes. And it may be a paradox of modern agriculture that the Cooleys' farm is not the only one that now derives a substantial portion of its income from a maze that grows for only a few weeks each fall. (The corn from the maze is harvested in November, Tayler Cooley said, and made into animal feed.)
Four skybridges connect sections of the massive corn maze at Cool Patch Pumpkins in Dixon.
(Tayler Cooley)
Farming is a tough business, especially for small and medium-sized farms, which can be shaken by the weather and fluctuations in commodity prices and fuel costs.
When it comes to agritourism, corn mazes once lurked in the shadows of pumpkin patches, berry picking operations, and hayrides through apple orchards. But, perhaps because of those mythical roots and its ability to test the human psyche, its popularity has skyrocketed.
Herbst, founder of Maize, said the first commercial corn maze he knows of was grown by a farmer in the early 1990s. Herbst built his own in 1996. Today, his company prepares maze designs for hundreds of farms. . For an additional fee, your team will create the maze.
“Corn maze has become a staple word for October, just like pumpkins,” he said.
In 2023, according to Guiness, a Quebec farmer usurped Cool Patch as the world's largest maze. But for the thousands of people who now view a trip to Dixon as one of their fall rituals, it matters little.
“I grew up coming here,” said Becca Invanusich, 32, who was visiting on a recent Saturday from Santa Rosa with her fiancé and two friends.
As a child, her maze style was cheating: “I would just shoot through it,” she said, pointing to the rows of corn.
But as an adult, she said, she relishes the mental challenge. Their group planned to solve the puzzle, no matter how long it took.
if you go: Cool Patch Pumpkins is located at 6150 Dixon Ave. W, off Interstate 80 in Dixon. Fall hours are daily, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., weather permitting. The entrance fee is $22 per person. Children under 5 years old are free, as is parking.
