Google Maps Says My Driveway Is The Entrance To State Park

For more than 23 years, Laurie has lived in a New Jersey home bordering a state park. And for two decades, her driveway went unmolested by folks looking for the park entrance. But now she’s got six signs up in her drive to tell people that her land is not for their recreational use, all because of a goof on Google Maps.

“It started with one or two people but last year dozens of people were coming up,” she tells the Star-Ledger. “This year, someone told us that the directions for Round Valley State Park on Google Maps led them to our driveway.”

Even before she knew about the Google goof (Goofle?), Laurie knew she had to do something to alert the mistaken drivers. So last summer she placed two “No Trespassing” signs at the bottom of her driveway, a “Private Drive” sign 50 feet farther up the drive and a final “No Trespassing” sign closer to her home.

“Many people chose to ignore them and come up anyway,” she tells the Star-Ledger.

She’s since added an 8-foot-long orange traffic barricade, with signs reading “Private Driveway/Private Residence” and “No Park Access,” and another sign at the bottom of the driveway that reads “NOT Park Entrance… Private Driveway… Google Maps is wrong!”

And yeah, that didn’t work.

She also tried reporting the error to Google Maps five times since May, but as of this morning it still hadn’t been fixed.

“It often depends on the type of change and how extensive it might be,” a Google rep tells the Star-Ledger. “We recognize that there may be occasional inaccuracies and appreciate the feedback we get about how to improve our tools… We apologize for any frustration the direction error has caused.”

Google map brings recreation-seeking motorists in droves to Clinton Township family’s driveway [NJ.com]

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