Many of the more western states are loaded with town names and county names that were appropriated from locations much further east.?ÿ Kansas has Detroit, Urbana, Augusta, Manhattan, Oswego, Erie, Elkhart, Galena, Columbus, Decatur, Hanover, Uniontown, Frontenac, New Albany, Hesston, Ottawa, Lansing, Canton, Danville, Galesburg, Hartford, Hamilton, Zurich, Williamsburg, Toronto, Tampa, Buffalo, Scranton, Syracuse, Elgin, Louisville, Long Island, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Lebanon, Peru, Cuba, Havana, Moline, Muscotah, Reading, Princeton and many more.
Kansas City, KS
Isn't Kansas City not in Kansas? I remember CNN making a big deal about Trump not knowing this fact.
There are 2 Kansas City's: one in Kansas and one in Missouri. With only a river between them.
The Royals and Chiefs play in Kansas City, Missouri not Kansas City, Kansas, which is only ten miles or so from the stadium.?ÿ That is what caused the issue to come up.?ÿ KCK is surrounded by VERY nice other cities.?ÿ KCMO to a lesser extent as it covers a larger area.?ÿ Many people say they are going to Kansas City but never hit the city limits of either City.
No Paris, TX or Vancouver, WA yet.
A few off the top of my head (because I have been there).
Nevada City, Montana (and California)
Virginia City, Montana
Idaho City, Idaho
Moscow, Idaho
Austin, Nevada
And probably several others that don't come immediately to mind.
Loyal
East TX is a wonderful place for town names that don't seem to fit.?ÿ There's Paris of course, then there's a Mt. Vernon, Pittsburg (no H), Coffeeville, Atlanta, New Boston, Detroit, Klondike, Lafayette, Deadwood and Naples, just to name a few.
I had family in Gilmer, TX for a while.?ÿ Driving down that way I always went through Paris.?ÿ North of Paris in OK there's a junction with a roadsign that has an arrow to the left to a small town in OK named Frogville.?ÿ The same sign has a straight arrow labeled Paris.
I always thought there was a seed of a good country song on that sign...something like "I lost my girl halfway between Frogville and Paris".
Then there was the guy who said he couldn't find the town he was from on the map, but his mother told him he was born just outside of Wedlock, in Texas.
but no New Hampshire City, NH (guessing)
Google is your friend...
Municipalities, Counties and Regions
?ÿ
No New Hampshire City; but New Hampton is close.
A sign in Lynchville, Maine not far from my old stomping grounds.
Whenever I see it, I remember my grandmother telling me about buying horsemeat from a butcher?ÿ in Mexico when times were tough.?ÿ?ÿ
I'm of Finnish descent, but I was born in Norway and raised in Sweden.
?ÿ
?ÿ
@dougie New Hampton is just one variation on Hampton, including also Hampton Falls and North Hampton, all named for the city in England.
Vancouver, B.C. was established long after Vancouver, WA was a thing. So that reference might go the other way around.?ÿ
Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts have mostly place names from England where the earliest settlements were (Boston, Portsmouth, Dover, Salem), with a healthy dose of of Algonkian names (Merrimac, Natick, Nashua, Ossipee, Machias). Some of the later towns picked up names after people (Lowell, Hopkinton, Dummer) or more exotic locales (Berlin, Norway, Paris).
Speaking of Gotebo, OK as being the only one how about Monkeys Eyebrow, KY
Exline, Correctionville,?ÿ and Elkader might be unique names found only in Iowa.
Correctionville is on the 2nd correction line in the surveys of Iowa.?ÿ They have a slogan "Jog down our Main Street" referring to a few yards that the street offsets to follow section lines.?ÿ Most of the people don't realize the jog isn't actually yards, but just short of 4 miles, having accumulated convergence across most of the width of the state.
A good friend lives in Stark, NH.?ÿ The old joke they tell is, "If you don't like Stark be careful because the next town is Dummer."
The saying in Oklahoma is that if you want to get to Maud you have to go through Bowlegs to do it.?ÿ And, that's true if you are coming from the east, headed west.
Correctionville is a cool name.?ÿ Nothing like that down here in OK.?ÿ However there is a plethora of little towns with streets that are aptly named with the likes of Meridian, Range Line, Base Line and Division.
The public land survey system had been fine-tuned by the time the GLO got started on OK in the last of the 19th. century.?ÿ Every fourth east-west township line (standard parallels) contains its convergence, starting anew to the north.?ÿ This created jogs from mere links close to the Indian Meridian to hundreds of chains the further east or west of our principal meridian one travels.
Almost every lay person I speak with when I get button-holed into a conversation in the field seems to refer to the jogging of the section lines as "surveyor's error".?ÿ Of course this is misnomer, but I rarely have the patience to explain exactly why things were laid out in that manner.
I usually just smile and nod.
