Shippensburg, Pa. -- The secret in Jim Witter's cornfield is starting to get out.
"There's been an increase in airplane traffic," said Tim Costanza, who lives about half a mile from the Witter farm and, as the mayor, is one of those in the know. "So it's been spotted from above."
Spend any time at all in Shippensburg, Pa., a farm town of 5,700 people in the south central part of the state, and one of its proud, friendly residents is likely to point out its two claims to fame: Peggy, the youngest daughter of the town founder, Edward Shippen, was married to Benedict Arnold. And in 1990, its boys won the Little League World Series.
So it is bound to be a button-busting occasion when Jim Witter's secret is finally unveiled. Carved into a 30-acre plot of corn across from his farmhouse is the world's largest maze.
It is invisible from the ground. But viewed from a small airplane, cut among the fields and baseball diamonds and housing developments, the maze looms fantastic, like an ancient rebus.
With two miles of paths describing the contours of -- what else? -- a ship, inside a 130,000 square-foot perimeter, the Amazing Maize Maze, as it has been dubbed by Don Frantz, the man behind the venture, is a bit of old-fashioned, not to say corny, show business come to Shippensburg. And it is an odd match, to say the least.
"Traditionally, you don't think of a cornfield as something for entertainment," said Gerry Reichard, the coordinator of the Shippensburg Young Adult Farmers Association, who has been advising Mr. Frantz on care of the corn.
By the time it opens to the public on Aug. 19 -- for three weekends, the second of which coincides with the annual Shippensburg Corn Festival -- the maze will be equipped with a sound system, two bridges, a portable toilet, treasure chests where maze-walkers will find partial maps and other clues and a series of speaking tubes through which the confused or frustrated can communicate with an elevated maze-master for instructions. Any walkers who make it through without aid and can draw their own accurate maps will be rewarded with a chicken dinner.
Mr. Frantz, 43, is a production executive for Walt Disney Co. and an associate producer of "Beauty and the Beast" on Broadway, but he is on his own in Shippensburg. (He credits his friend Stephen Sondheim with first coming up with "Amazing Maize Maze.")
