Google Street View's Unmappable City

0:00We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greetings. Lightsaber clashing! The boylight's on tower of terror dropping! Banshee flying! Space Mountain launching! Galaxy rewinding! What's the whole network galaxy rewinding? Fireworks igniting! World of other worlds, for whatever you love. Infinite worlds await at the most magical place on earth while Disney World Resort. Hello and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast. As a reminder, 404 Media is a journalist-owned company and needs your support. Subscribers get bonus episodes, bonus segments, and early access to interview episodes like this one. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. I'm Jason Kebler and this week I'm talking to documentary filmmaker Chris Par. Chris goes by Chris the producer on YouTube and has made a number of short tech documentaries

1:01that I really liked. This week I'm talking to him about a video he made called, I mapped Google's only secret city, which is about a Google Maps anomaly I had no idea about until I saw his video. In just 18 years, more than 10 million miles driven across 100 countries using cars, planes, and camels, stitching over 22 billion images together gives us all access to planet Earth. Except for one place. Chris grew up near a town called North Oaks, Minnesota, which is one of the richest, most exclusive towns in Minnesota. It's also the only city in the United States that is not on Google Street View. This is because of the way the town is set up. The entirety of the town is owned by the people who live there and there's no city-owned property. Even the roads are owned by the people who live there. This is created a situation where North Oaks has been able to ban Google Street View cars from entering, raising questions about who gets privacy in America, and how they get it. Chris set out to map North Oaks and went to pretty absurd lengths to do so.

2:03Turns out it's actually pretty easy to become a registered FAA pilot. So I strapped my 360 camera to the bottom of my drone and headed straight for North Oaks. Here's my interview with Chris about this process. I'm talking to Chris Parr, a very good documentary filmmaker who did a video recently that I thought was amazing. You mapped the only unmapped city in America on Google Map Street View. I had no idea that there was anywhere in the United States that's not on Street View. Can you tell me a little bit about North Oaks, Minnesota, and why it is not on Street View? Yeah, for sure. So North Oaks, Minnesota is a suburb of the Twin Seas. It's about, well, I live in Minneapolis. It's 14 minutes away from me. So it's very close to the urban metropolis.

3:04It's known by Minnesotans as a place where executives and CEOs live. Famously Walter Mondale is from North Oaks, but also like United Health Care executives, target executives. Why people know of it in particular is because in 2007 when Google Street View was launched, most of the country was on Google Street View. Including North Oaks, but the North Oaks mayor at the time sent a letter to Google saying that they trespassed because technically speaking, the entire city of North Oaks is private property. So Google complied, they took the images down up until a few weeks ago, you could not view any Street View images on Google Maps in North Oaks. So as I understand it, it's not just that they put up no trespassing signs, it's that literally like the roads in this town are owned by the private residents of this town.

4:11It's kind of a complicated setup that they have, right? Yeah, and to be honest, I don't fully understand it. I talked to a mapping professor, Dr. Patrick McAfee, who kind of did some background research after I asked him. Basically, what he told me is that my house, I don't know where you live, Jason, but most people's houses, their property does go into the center of the road, but there's an easement that allows the public to access the roadway. In North Oaks, that easement does not exist. You own your property goes into the center of the road, the person on the other side of the road from you owns into the center of the road, leaving no public passage. So the entire city is owned by the residents and managed by effectively homeowners association. So you set out to add North Oaks to Street View. I guess like, what was the plan originally? What were you going to do originally?

5:15I mean, honestly, I just wanted to do a video essay about North Oaks. It's a fascinating place. It's not geographic. Well, yeah, it's a geographic entity. I mean, the fact that it's the only unmap city in the country on Google Street Views is like a powerful YouTube title and thumbnail. So being a YouTube filmmaker, I thought this will be fun. As I was making the video, I realized that the airspace above it operates differently than the property on the ground. So having a little bit of knowledge of drones, I thought you could effectively map the city with a drone. It's like a gray area on how low you can fly the drone. Technically, though, if you launch your drone from public property, which anybody can do if you're a registered drone pilot, you can fly it straight up and above private property. Yeah, this is actually something that I used to report on a lot was like FAA drone regulations and things like that.

6:18And that is that was something like quite interesting that I learned is basically like the feds on the airspace, like starting arguably from like one foot above the ground. I know there's been like a couple different court cases about this specifics of that, but generally it's like the airspace is public airspace starting like really low. So what did you do? You like stood just outside of an orthodox and you flew a drone around and took video essentially. I just parked my car on the shoulder and I mean, I went to like I think six or seven different spots. The city's like fairly large, you know, it's three miles by three miles. So it's nine square feet, but or nine square miles. But yeah, I mean, I just pulled my car over under the shoulder and popped my drone up and flew it over and I don't know if I should be able to do that. I know that I am able to do it, but should we be able to do that was kind of the question that I wanted to tackle.

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9:39This is not something that like the only reason that it is this geographic anomaly is because it is like super exclusive and rich and like planned for this. And then also from what I could tell from your video, it's like this city has a lot of surveillance, like it's not just that they have no trespassing signs. It's that they have like automated license plate reader cameras at every entrance to the city, don't they? I don't know about every entrance, but definitely like the main, I think there's at least five entrances that have surveillance cameras have the entrances, entrances and exits. There are some that there are some like more obscure entrances. I think that don't have cameras, but yeah, for the most part, yeah. There's another little ripple to this that I thought was very interesting as well, which is basically like FA regulations say that you have to have line of sight of the drone at all times, meaning that you need to be able to see the drone at all times.

10:41And the city is big enough that that was impossible. And so it was impossible to map the whole thing without going into North Oaks. And so he went to this park that's in North Oaks, but you had to be invited to the park. Can you, can you just like tell me what, what, what's the deal with this park? Yeah, so from what I found online, according to North Oaks ordinances, you can go like visit a friend, you know, or if you're a contractor working on a house, you can go into the city, but you have to be an invited guest. So yeah, I, being on the shoulder of the road outside of North Oaks, I couldn't get access to the interior of the city. So I made a Craigslist post asking for somebody to invite me and I got an absolute ton of responses.

11:43I think I took it down like an hour or two after I posted it and, yeah, started texting with this woman named Maggie and she invited me. So I technically had the invite to go to the park. And a lot of people asked me like, Oh, do you think she really is from North Oaks? I do. Because she's told me that when she was a kid, she used to love going skating on the ice rinks at Westrack Park. And the only way that you would know that because there are no street view images of that is if you have been skating at those rinks. So yes, I went to the park and launched the drone from the park and flew around the interior of the city from there. Did, did Maggie know what you were doing? Actually, I might have, I might have mentioned that I was going to fly a drone. I'd have to go back and look at the, like the text messages, but a friend of mine that said drone enthusiast, we used to go to a park and fly drones together.

12:47So I didn't think it was like super unusual, but. Okay, so you, you did map it and you were able to submit, you know, images to Google Street View and I believe you mapped, you put it on the map for the first time ever, but I'm looking at Street View now and, and it's not mapped. It's gone. Do you know what, like what happened? So I've been in a battle with people that flag the images from what I understand if you, if you flag the image as a privacy concern, I would, I would imagine that Google doesn't want to deal with it. So they just immediately take the image down. There's like thousands and millions of photos here. So they don't, they can't like manually go and review all of them, but there's also nothing stopping me from just putting more up there. So I actually, if you go, go on to Street View and zoom into West Rack Park and take out your little pegman, I think there's one very small.

13:55Photosphere remaining. Do you see it? Oh, I see West Rack Park. Oh, okay, okay. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, it says uploaded by Chris Park, 21 January, 2026, and it was very snowy. I see a basketball court. I see some. I'm actually flying below that image. If you can zoom straight. Oh, yeah, yeah, I see you. So I don't know why like that dot is so small. I think that whoever I got to think somebody from the town or there's somebody involved is flagging all these. And because that dot is so small, they just haven't gone and flagged it. It's pretty funny because usually on Street View, you can like click around and like essentially drive your man. Yeah. And it's like this, you can't. It's just, yeah, I'm just stuck here. Yeah, I know. Do you so have you heard from anyone from North Oaks, like the mayor or the town of them in any way?

14:58Yeah, I would say no, but as of yesterday, I don't know how much I want to say about this because I want to talk to a lawyer now. But I did get a legal letter from the law firm representing the HOA. It's not asking me to take any of the videos down or anything. Basically, they say don't come back. I see is the is the gist of it. I see. I don't know. I don't know. I think that it is very odd that only one town in the entire country is not mapped. Yeah, I mean, I think I from what I understand is the only municipality that has been built with that like easement property line setup. That's why that's why it is the way. I mean, there's a lot of gated community. If you can't physically drive into a space, it's not on street view. But there's no single municipality except for North Oaks.

15:58Well, keep us updated. I'm going to hear how this, how this ends, but I think it's a cool project and sort of just talks about like who is allowed to have privacy and who is not, I think. Yeah, for sure. I think I think the only reason that my cause has sympathy is because it is a wealthy community. If it was not, I think everybody would be like, why did you do this man? It speaks no sense. I mean, I think that's right. I think that's right. But it is also like the only reason that this system is set up in this way is because it's such a wealthy community. Cool. Well, that's all I have. But this is very cool. I'm glad you did this. Yeah, thanks for taking an interest in that. Thanks so much for listening. This episode was produced by Gladysvilk and edited by Alyssa Midkath.

17:00We'll be back with a new episode in a few days.