How are places endowed with their names? Well … large cities usually begin as a spot where two roads meet and someone builds a general store. The town that springs up usually becomes known for the person who built the store, a local Indian tribe, a natural formation, or perhaps a battle. Sometimes a name recounts a great legend.
But some place-names appear to have been appointed by a central Ministry of Humorous and Ironic names. In some cases, they seem to have nothing whatever to do with what the place is actually like. Is the Bad River, in South Dakota, really so awful? Was Hell, Michigan, aptly named? Perhaps the title Heart's Content should have been reserved for a suburb of Palm Springs instead of a no-nonsense fishing village on frigid Trinity bay in Newfoundland.
What's the nightlife like along the Dead River outside Far Hills, New Jersey? Somnambulant, if the daylife is any indication. Even the city offices of Far Hills, a town of 2,000, are open only on Tuesdays. With ends-of-the-earth names like these, a visiting camper would have few expectations upon arriving at the banks of the Dead. As names conjure up images for visitors, we wonder how someone would expect to be received in Kissimmee, Florida, or Intercourse, Pennsylvania, for that matter. Bear in mind that Intercourse was founded in an era when that word referred to conversation as opposed to anything more intimate.
Sweet Water From A Bitter Creek
There are some towns whose names are obviously wishful thinking. When the people of Sweetwater, Texas, incorporated their little patch of ground, were they trying to dress up the fact that their principal source of water had long been named Bitter Creek? Later, though, they fixed the problem by renaming the creek after the town.
Another example is located on the northern border of Washington, D.C., where there is an incorporated town of about ten city blocks named Mount Rainier. The symbol proudly emblazoned on the city-limits signs placed only three blocks apart is the outline of Washington State's famous mountain. No, they didn't get their Washingtons mixed up. The town was incorporated after World War II by five veterans from Seattle who were homesick for their native state. So, twenty-seven hundred miles from Mount Rainier sits its namesake town, a symbol for all loved ones who must live apart.
Some location names are exquisitely … and painfully self-explanatory. The Great Dismal Swamp, south of Norfolk, Virginia, needs no elucidation. Nor does Disappointment Lake, a dry salt pan that appeared on the horizon as a wonderful liquid mirage to early explorers of the western Australian desert. Also appropriately christened is the Great Australian Bight, which looks as if someone had gnawed a hunk out of the bottom of that island continent. On the other hand, some places are not what you think: Junk Island is not a garbage landfill. It is in Junk Bay off Hong Kong and is named for the boats, Chinese junks, that ply its waters.
It is hard to know whether Goodenough Island, in the Solomon Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea, really was for those who landed there. Having no fresh water, but also being too far from the mainland to harbor cannibals, it proved 50-50 as a place to stay and was, well, good
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