Unusual Place Names

[JayMcGee]

actually, Dana, I think they mostly commuted from Whippingham, IOW

[BigV]

Pe Ell

Pe Ell was named after French-Canadian Pierre Charles, who lived in the area in the 1850s. Located 23 miles west of Chehalis on Scenic Highway 6 (Ocean Beach Highway). This small town has a strong Polish ancestry and the oldest church in town is the Holy Cross Polish National Church. They also have a vintage military tank right next to the fire station that is often missed by visitors. Logging continues to be the mainstay of Pe Ell's economy.

Forks (The one *I* always think about when y'all talk about Forks, and a heckuva lot shorter commute).

The City of Forks is a small, rural community with big ideas! Nestled between a million acres of national park and the wild Pacific Coast, Forks is the heart of the Olympic Peninsula's West End. It is a place where folks stop for pedestrians and still chat in grocery lines. Forks has traditionally been a timber town, with logging the mainstay of the ecomony. But that has changed a bit, and all sorts of fun things are happening. Technology is taking a major role as a redundant loop of fiberoptic cable around the Peninsula is only months from completion. Our schools are so wired they are ranked among the "most wired" schools in the nation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has chosen Forks High School as a model for "High Tech High". We now have an incubator building for tech businesses. We also have a new industrial park, a huge airport, and a community aquatic center that will be complete this spring (2005).

Puyallup Most famous (to me at least) for their fair. They musta got in on the internet thingee early--http://www.thefair.com/ "thefair"? Around here it is The Fair.

Nooksack 'nuff said.

Twisp Whimsical sounding, isn't it?

Located at the confluence of the Twisp and Methow rivers, the town of Twisp is a year-around paradise that offers abundant sunshine, generous snowfall and plenty of wildlife including bald eagles, white-tailed and mule deer, cougars, bears, even occasional elk and moose.

If outdoor recreation is your passion, Twisp is definitely the place to be with four seasons of fun that include mountain biking, hiking, horseback riding, skiing, snowmobiling, hunting, fishing and much more.

Founded in 1897, Twisp is the largest town in the Methow Valley with an eclectic mix of approximately 1,000 residents that includes artists, musicians, writers, ranchers, farmers, entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts, among others.

Vader, WA. No link, you can look it up. Named after some guy.

Walla Walla Euphonious, especially when spoken by Roger Rabbit.

[wolf]

Wierd place names was something that I loved as a geography major in college. I remember places like Smackover (corruption of Chemin Covert), Nigger Ben Meadow, and of course, some of the more bizarre Pennsylvania town names like Intercourse, Bird-in-Hand, and Blue Ball.

King of Prussia, incidentally, is named after a what, rather than a who. Because I knew this I won some cool stuff from a local radio DJ ... he used to make fun of the name and would always ask, "Who is the King of Prussia anyway." I called with the explanation that it was named after the Inn that at the time was still standing at the intersection of 202 and Gulph Road (it has since been moved as part of a rescue the historic inn project). He told me I was full of crap and hung up on me. Later that morning, on my way to work, I was quite surprised to hear my call played on the radio! Nearly put my car in the ditch. He made some additional jokes at my expense and played some music. Anyway, shortly after playing my call, he received a call from a very nice lady at the historical society who took him to task for the way he treated me ... a friend of mine told me about this call (we had a no radios rule at work) and I called him back the next morning, told him he owed me, and he apologized, agreed, and sent me a gift pack with all kinds of cool station merchandise.

[Spexxvet]

Wolf the geography major? Wow! Does that help you in your current occupation?
Wolf: "send the men in white coats to pick up Mrs. Smith. She's in Lower Providence, not to be confused with Upper Providence or Nether Providence. That would be Lattitude yadayada, longitude yadayada. Named by Thomas Leper in 1635, it defined the portion of land deeded to Leper by Prince Schlomo, of the Finnish Schlomos - a deed voided by Wiliam Penn....."

[glatt]

Very cool, wolf. I always wondered about King of Prussia. I assumed it was named to honor the King of Prussia in thanks for all the Prussian mercenaries who helped out in the Revolutionary War. Named after an inn, huh? I never would have guessed that.

[Shawnee123]

Perhaps.

I can tell you that there is a huge difference between Houston, OH and Houston TX!

[wolf]

Yes, I have a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and Planning. Only after you graduate do you learn that you have to be related to someone in politics to work in this field. I have never worked as a geographer or planner.

More about King of Prussia

Lesson Plans from the National Park Service that talk about the move

A lot of the weird town names in Pennsylvania result from being named after an inn ... the original name of the town of West Chester was Turk's Head. In Pennsylvania Dutch Country I have already mentioned Blue Ball and Bird-in-Hand. Near me, Blue Bell and Broad Axe are both inn names.

And then we have Bala Cynwyd. That's the fault of the Welsh. I love hearing people who aren't from here try to pronounce that one. And Bryn Mawr. And Bryn Athyn, and Gwynedd.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by wolf

More about King of Prussia

This bit was particularly interesting.

For more than a quarter century the inn was marooned on an artificial island, with cars and trucks roaring past it on all sides. It was sealed up for years, surrounded by a high fence.

That whole story reminds me of the lyrics to Telegraph Road, by Dire Straits.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by wolf

...And then we have Bala Cynwyd. That's the fault of the Welsh. I love hearing people who aren't from here try to pronounce that one. And Bryn Mawr. And Bryn Athyn, and Gwynedd.

Is it true that the "man in charge" of building the main line railroad was Welsh, and named the stations, and the towns took the station names as the town names?

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Is it true that the "man in charge" of building the main line railroad was Welsh, and named the stations, and the towns took the station names as the town names?

I don't think the train went through in 1862.

The names predate the train stations.

Except for Ambler, which was named after Mary Ambler's brave and selfless work in helping the victims of the train crash in that town. Ambler was originally called "Wissahickon," the name which is used for the high school, school district, and local library branches. (I think the Ambler Library became the Wissahickon Valley Public Library some time in the late 1960s, as I remember taking older books out that had the original Ambler Public Library stamps on them).

[xoxoxoBruce]

The original "Main Line of Public Works" project became the "Main Line" of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad in 1834. It went through Bala, Cynwyd and Ardmore.
The West Philadelphia Railroad opened it's tracks through Overbrook, Merion, Narberth and Wynnewood to Ardmore in 1840.
The state aquired the West Philly RR in 1850 and gave it, along with the Philly & Columbia RR, to the Pensylvania Railroad in 1857.

The Welsh names come from the Welsh settlers.

The Welsh Tract, also called the Welsh Barony, was a portion of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania settled largely by Welsh-speaking Quakers. It covers 40,000 acres (160 km²) to the north-west of Philadelphia. The original settlers, led by John Roberts, negotiated with William Penn in 1684 to constitute the Tract as a separate county whose local government would use the Welsh language, since many of the settlers spoke no English. Notwithstanding this agreement, by the 1690s the land had already been partitioned into different counties, despite appeals from the Welsh settlers, and the Tract never gained self-government.

The Roberts and other Welsh families became influential in the area, through the building of mills and the eventual introduction of the railroad. It is the railroad that gives the best-known part of the area its current name - the Main Line, referring to the main track of the now-defunct Pennsylvania Railroad.

The area is now part of Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware counties. Many towns in the area still bear Welsh names. Some, such as Bala Cynwyd, are named after places in Wales. Others, such as Tredyffrin or Uwchlan, have independent Welsh names. The former town of Merion Square was renamed Gladwyne in 1891 in order to imitate the stylish Welsh names of adjoining towns, although the name is meaningless in Welsh.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by wolf

I don't think the train went through in 1862.

The names predate the train stations.

...

It was the railroad company that used the old Welsh names, Bala and Cynwyd for their stations and so really named our community by bringing into daily use the names of the ancestral towns of the pioneers.

This confuses me. The names predate the station, but the railroad company named the community? Uhhhh - what?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

This confuses me. The names predate the station, but the railroad company named the community? HHS - what?

Where did that quote come from?
Before the railroad, there were no "communities", only farms and an occasional store, smithy or Meeting House.
The railroads built stations and gave them Welsh names from wherever, possibly farms, or roads named after places in Wales, the locals came from.
The "communities" grew up around and took the names of, the stations.

Some have changed, like Bala and Cynwyd were separate until the USPS decided they only needed one post office, which they called Bala-Cynwyd. As the two towns grew together they became one.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

It compounds the mischief that "wy" in Welsh is a dipthong not found in English -- wee approximates it, but it's more correctly like ooey or Pooh-y, and even then that's with an accent.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The previously mentioned village of Blue Ball, PA, was named for the Blue Ball Hotel which was rumored to be George Washington's first recruiting station for the Continental Army. Being in East Earl Township, Lancaster County, (rtes 322 & 23) it's hard to believe it was the first, but it was certainly one of them.

Friend of mine leased the hotel and operated it for about 10 years with a liquor license leased from another party.
When the owners of the hotel wanted to break the lease, they arranged for the liquor license to be yanked and forced the place to close.
A number of groups were trying to save the place as a historic building (already in the National register) so the owners, fearing they would be tied up, tore it down over a holiday weekend....4th of July, if I remember right.

I got there the second day and the porches, doors and windows were gone and the bar and kitchen gutted. The third day it was gone, except for the rubble to be pushed into the Cellar when they'd finished removing the beams and metal hardware for butchering cattle, sheep, hogs and Buffalo.

The Buffalo were in recent years as there are a number of farms near by that raise them. They also held a competition for who could bring is the biggest Snapping Turtle. The shell was displayed in the bar, for a year, with the winners name on it. This contest supplied the turtle soup pot for the next year also.

This all happened, hmm....I guess 8 or 10 years ago, and it's still a vacant lot...bastards.