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It’s fall again, and in Oregon, that means corn mazes. Dozens of these man-made mazes crop up on farms throughout the state each year, but how does one go about constructing such an intricate, and oftentimes muddy, labyrinth?

For Sue Cropp, owner of Lake View Farms in North Plains, the first step is planting the corn in two different directions.

"Then we draw and map out the field with the proper dimensions, and take a GPS on a four-wheeler with a sprayer behind it," said Cropp.

Cropp also said her son-in-law, an engineer, draws up the design each year.

The creators of other mazes, such as The Maize at the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island, call in professionals such as Brett Herbst of The MAiZE, a Utah-based company that specializes in the design, construction and marketing of corn mazes.

"I got into it as a fluke," Herbst said. "I was working for a big farming company when I saw a picture of a corn maze in Pennsylvania in a magazine. I ended up making my own maze and it went over like crazy. Then I started getting calls from people wanting help creating their own mazes."

Herbst uses a computer to map out a client’s desired design, then prints out blueprints and uses a GPS to lay out the design on the actual field when the corn is 6 inches to 1 foot tall. He says this year’s Blazers-themed maze on Sauvie Island was a challenge, but that the most difficult maze designs involve faces.

"Faces are the hardest because you’re trying to get the design to look like a real person," said Herbst. "We did one last year of a guy’s mom and dad. The parents didn’t know he did it until they were up in the helicopter."