Have you ever heard of a ‘Potemkin village’? It’s a fascinating term for a fake place, often built to fool someone important or hide a less appealing reality. The story behind this phrase is quite a tale itself! Legend has it that back in 1787, Catherine the Great of Russia decided to tour Crimea, a territory newly added to her empire. Her influential partner, Grigory Potemkin, was eager to impress her. The problem? Crimea was largely underdeveloped and struggling.
So, what did Potemkin supposedly do? According to the popular, though likely exaggerated, story, he ordered the construction of charming, yet completely fake, villages all along Catherine’s route. Imagine freshly painted building fronts (with nothing behind them!), carefully arranged herds of animals to suggest abundance, sacks filled with sand instead of grain, and even peasants instructed to look happy and prosperous. Catherine, the story goes, was completely taken in by this elaborate show.
While historians today believe the scale of this deception was probably overstated, the term ‘Potemkin village’ stuck. It now refers to any artificial or deceptive display designed to hide an undesirable truth or create a false impression of prosperity. These aren’t just historical footnotes; fake towns have been created for all sorts of reasons, from propaganda to military training, and even as clever traps! Let’s delve into ten of the most intriguing fake towns and their surprising stories.
10. Kijong-dong, North Korea: The Propaganda Village
From a distance, Kijong-dong in North Korea looks like a pleasant, ordinary village. Built in the 1950s within the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea, it boasts neat buildings and a sense of order. However, on closer inspection, it’s clear that something is amiss. The windows have no glass, lights operate on timers, and the only signs of life are maintenance workers.
Kijong-dong, also known as ‘Peace Village,’ is entirely fake. No one actually lives there. Its sole purpose is propaganda, designed to project an image of North Korea as a prosperous and happy place. To further this illusion, powerful speakers blast anti-Western messages and patriotic music for up to 20 hours a day, loud enough to be heard in the nearby South Korean village of Daesong-dong. Despite these efforts, the village hasn’t managed to persuade any South Koreans to defect.
9. Doom Town, Nevada: Atomic Test Site
With a name like Doom Town, you wouldn’t expect a popular residential area, and thankfully, this place was never meant for living. During the Cold War in the 1950s, the Nevada desert became a primary site for nuclear weapons testing. The U.S. government conducted nearly a thousand atomic tests so close to Las Vegas that the iconic mushroom clouds were visible from the city, bizarrely becoming a tourist spectacle.
To understand the impact of an atomic bomb on a typical American town, scientists created several fake towns, including Doom Town. These weren’t just flimsy sets; they featured real houses, fully furnished and stocked with food. Cars were parked along streets, and clothed mannequins posed as residents. The goal was to see what, if anything, could survive a nuclear blast. The answer, unsurprisingly, was very little.
8. WWII Airplane Camouflage Town: Protecting Wartime Industry
During World War II, protecting vital war industries was a top priority. The U.S. government came up with an ingenious plan to hide important factories from potential enemy bombers. One of the most famous examples was the fake town built over the Boeing Plant 2 in Seattle, Washington, dubbed ‘Boeing Wonderland.’ Similar elaborate camouflages were created elsewhere, including one concealing the Lockheed plant in Burbank, California.
Leveraging the proximity to Hollywood and a surge of wartime patriotism, the government enlisted talented movie set designers and painters. They created convincing illusions of residential neighborhoods complete with fake houses (often only a few feet tall), sidewalks, fences, trees made from burlap and chicken wire, and even cars. Greenery was painted directly onto runways. Designers paid incredible attention to detail, sometimes painting ‘yards’ brown to simulate unirrigated grass, all to fool enemy aircraft flying overhead.
7. Theresienstadt, Czech Republic: A Deceptive Facade
This entry carries a somber and tragic history. Theresienstadt was a Nazi concentration camp and ghetto during World War II. It served as a transit camp for Jews awaiting deportation to extermination camps and forced labor sites. The conditions were horrific, and its inhabitants lived under constant threat.
In June 1944, under international pressure, the Nazis permitted a visit from the International Red Cross. To deceive the inspectors, an elaborate Potemkin village-style cleanup was orchestrated. Thousands of prisoners were deported to Auschwitz to reduce overcrowding. Buildings were painted, gardens were planted, and cultural events were staged. Once the Red Cross delegation left, the facade was dropped, and the brutal reality returned. In a particularly cynical propaganda move, footage from this staged ‘beautification’ was used in a film portraying Theresienstadt as a ‘spa town’ where elderly Jews could supposedly retire in comfort.
6. Apix, Florida: The Secret Project Cover
In the 1950s, amidst the Cold War, the U.S. government was secretly researching liquid hydrogen as a potential aircraft fuel. This top-secret initiative, codenamed Project Suntan, aimed to develop a spy plane powered by this innovative fuel. To conceal such a large-scale and sensitive operation, a fake town was conceived.
The government invented ‘Apix,’ an acronym for ‘Air Products Incorporated, Experimental.’ They chose a remote, swampy location in Palm Beach County, Florida, even assigning it a fictional population and plotting land for non-existent residential development. Today, very little information about Apix remains publicly available, though it sometimes still appears on old maps. A lone railroad signal box bearing the name ‘Apix’ is one of the few physical remnants of this phantom town.
5. Fake Paris: WWI Aerial Deception
During World War I, Paris was a prime target for German aerial bombardment, particularly by Zeppelin airships. To protect the real City of Lights, French officials devised a clever plan: create a decoy Paris to mislead enemy pilots flying nighttime raids. The idea was to divert bombers to attack this fake city instead of the actual capital.
Located just north of the real Paris, this counterfeit city was designed to look authentic from above, especially at night. It featured electric lights mimicking Parisian streets and landmarks, replica buildings, and even a fake Champs-Élysées and a train station. Unfortunately, we’ll never know if this elaborate ruse would have succeeded. The war ended before the fake Paris was fully completed, and now only photographs and records remain of this ambitious deception.
4. Holland Town, Shanghai: Themed Urban Development
Visitors to Shanghai might be surprised to stumble upon a replica Dutch town, complete with cobblestone streets and a windmill, incongruously situated in an industrial area. This is Holland Town, part of Shanghai’s ‘One City, Nine Towns’ initiative launched in the early 2000s. Each of the planned satellite towns was designed with a distinct international theme, aiming to decentralize Shanghai’s massive population and develop suburban districts.
However, the project met with mixed success. Many of these themed towns, including Holland Town, initially struggled to attract residents. Tourists, too, often preferred experiencing authentic Chinese culture rather than replicas of European cities. For a while, these areas were largely empty, primarily serving as picturesque backdrops for wedding photos. Over time, Holland Town has seen increased occupancy and is now home to many locals, though its beginnings were distinctly Potemkin-esque.
3. Mcity, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Testing Ground for Driverless Cars
How do you safely test self-driving cars, which need to navigate unpredictable real-world scenarios like icy roads, jaywalking pedestrians, and erratic human drivers? Testing them in busy, populated areas poses obvious risks. The solution: build a dedicated, realistic fake town specifically for this purpose.
Mcity, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one such facility. Used by major automotive companies like Ford, Toyota, and General Motors, it’s a sophisticated testing ground for autonomous vehicle technology. Mcity meticulously recreates a typical urban environment with real streets, intersections, traffic lights, road signs, parking meters, and even a railroad crossing. While its existence is known, the facility is quite secretive, with public demonstrations and visits generally restricted, allowing companies to test their cutting-edge technology in a controlled yet realistic setting.
2. Ertebat Shar, California: Fake Afghan Village for Military Training
Fort Irwin, a vast U.S. Army base in California’s Mojave Desert (roughly the size of Rhode Island), hosts the National Training Center. Here, soldiers undergo intensive 21-day rotations to prepare for deployment. A key part of this training involves familiarizing them with environments they might encounter overseas, leading to the creation of Ertebat Shar, a highly realistic mock Afghan village.
This fabricated village is designed to immerse soldiers in a convincing foreign setting. It’s populated by actors, many of Afghan descent, who play roles like shopkeepers selling fake bread and meat, local officials, and civilians. The layout, based on satellite imagery of actual towns in Baghdad and Afghanistan, includes narrow streets and typical buildings. While incredibly realistic at ground level, an aerial view reveals the illusion: many structures are merely facades propped up by wooden frames.
1. Agloe, New York: The Mapmakers’ Trap Town That Became Real
Our final fake town wasn’t built for propaganda, testing, or military deception. Agloe, New York, was a ‘paper town’ or ‘copyright trap,’ ingeniously created by mapmakers at the General Drafting Company in the 1930s. Its purpose was simple: to catch competitors who were illicitly copying their maps.
The name ‘Agloe’ was an anagram of the initials of the map’s creators, Otto G. Lindberg (OGL) and Ernest Alpers (EA). Sure enough, Agloe eventually appeared on a map produced by rival company Rand McNally. General Drafting accused them of plagiarism. However, Rand McNally defended themselves by stating that Agloe was indeed a real place – someone had built the Agloe General Store at the exact fictional location! The store’s owner had seen Agloe on a map and decided it was a good spot for a business, despite the absence of any actual town. Thus, a completely fabricated cartographic trap briefly became a real, albeit tiny, landmark.
From elaborate wartime deceptions and chilling propaganda tools to cutting-edge test sites and clever copyright traps, these fake towns reveal so much about human ingenuity, strategic thinking, and sometimes, our darker impulses. They are reminders that not everything we see can be taken at face value and that sometimes, the most unbelievable places are the ones crafted entirely by human hands for a specific, often hidden, purpose.
Which of these fascinating fake towns surprised you the most? Do you know of any others with equally bizarre backstories? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
