Westport corn maze hits three years

Three years in, Buzzards Bay corn maze crew continues to refine beloved fall tradition

By Ted Hayes
Posted 10/13/26

Three years in, they haven’t lost anyone yet.

But the corn is head high and there is another month, at least, before the brewers and corn maze builders at Buzzards Bay Brewing on Horseneck …

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Westport corn maze hits three years

Three years in, Buzzards Bay corn maze crew continues to refine beloved fall tradition

Posted

Three years in, they haven’t lost anyone yet.

But the corn is head high and there is another month, at least, before the brewers and corn maze builders at Buzzards Bay Brewing on Horseneck Road can toast another successful maze season over a pint of boo brown ale, their fall offering.

“We go through every Thursday to make sure we’re not missing anyone,” the brewery’s Bill Russell joked late last week.

Indeed, this year’s corn maze, which opened to the public on the Labor Day weekend, is intricate. It covers seven acres and has dozens of twists, turns, dead ends and tricky sections. And there are secrets too. And games, and cows (not real ones).

It’s open weekends from 1 p.m. to dusk and apart from a maze map, visitors are given a storyline every year that they’re encouraged to try to figure out as they twist through the maze, collecting clues and figuring out puzzles.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Russell, who said this year’s theme is ‘Moosual Suspects,’ likely a take on the twisting, turning film the Usual Suspect. The storyline walkers will be presented with revolves around the movies and particularly, scenes that deal with cows.

Russell and his staff came up with the idea for a corn maze in 2024, the brewery’s 25th anniversary, and after three years, he said that while the process of designing, planting, cutting and building a maze gets easier every year, it’s always a lot of fun.

“First you have to plant the corn, then work on a concept design,” he said. “Once the corn is a couple of inches high you go through and cut out the maze” — that’s usually the Eureka moment when people ask him how it’s made in the first place — “‘Oh, the corn grows up around the maze?!”

In designing and cutting the maze, Russell enlists the same people who take care of the Escobar maze in Portsmouth every year — “they go out and grid the field, map it out. Then it’s cut.”

The maze has attracted hundreds this year and Russell said that luckily, the nor’easter wasn’t too bad and caused minimal damage.

It will remain open until the days start getting short, and until then runs every weekend starting at 1 p.m.

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Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.