A corn maze that vanished last year because warehouses swallowed its field is coming back this fall — just down the road. The Twin Cities Harvest Festival and Maze will reopen in October at a new Brooklyn Park location, according to organizer Shirley Bouwman, after the family behind it spent the past year hunting for land and nursing a stubborn crop through a hot, dry summer.
The festival has moved to 8901 101st Avenue North, roughly a mile south of its longtime home, Bouwman told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. The new site sits near Highway 169 and Highway 610, a stretch of northern Hennepin County that has been rapidly redeveloped from farmland into industrial space, as reported by CCX Media.
Last fall, the maze itself was missing entirely. Expanding warehouse and manufacturing development around the festival’s old 109th Avenue site eliminated the space needed for a full-scale maze, CCX Media reported at the time, and organizers were limited to corn pits and inflatables while they searched for new ground. This year, per the same account, a hot and dry Minnesota summer added a second obstacle, threatening the corn crop before it reached maturity in time for the season.
A Hand-Drawn Design, Not GPS
Bouwman said the maze will be back in full corn maze glory, and that it will definitely be open for its fall season this year. Unlike many commercial mazes that rely on GPS-automated tractor planting, the Bouwman family sketches its designs by hand on graph paper at the kitchen table, then spends a week cutting stroller- and wheelchair-accessible paths with hoes and construction paint, according to a 2024 report from Alpha News. This year’s design marks the nation’s 250th anniversary…