10. Kindred
I thought this was just an old-timey way to refer to “one’s family and relations.” Not an obvious candidate for the name of a town, but hey …
Well, wouldn’t you know?
“Kindred” is also a surname. In
our case, we’re talking in particular about the surname of one William S.
Kindred, a local “realtor” (i.e., the guy who bought the land from the
railroad) and later mayor.
This town of about 700 is in the eastern part of the state, and
serves basically as a bedroom community for Fargo. (Seriously? Fargo has its own “bedroom communities”?)
The homepage of the town’s website states that
Kindred “has a lot to offer.” In fact,
it repeats that statement no less than eight times. And the last one of these ends with this
priceless typo:
We have a lot to offer! Come see
for yourselft!
You really have to check out that site. Between the typos and the over-the-top prose,
it’s a real beaut.
Probably the main
thing Kindred has to offer, though, is pie
(“hero shot” – i.e., main pic – on the site’s homepage)
9. Cannon Ball(“hero shot” – i.e., main pic – on the site’s homepage)
It’s an odd one, but at least it’s changed from what the
Arikara Indians used to call it – načiiʾuuháwi sananaapíkat.
It’s named after the Cannon Ball River. The river gets its name from the concretions
of sand, silt, and calcite that occur in it and that resemble cannonballs.
Cannon Ball the town is in south North Dakota, right on the
border with north South Dakota. It’s on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. The main drag in town appears to be called
Weasel Street.
Named after a particularly loud stereo system? As a lure for fishermen? After some dude?
Yup, it’s the third one.
Max Bass was the North Dakota land commissioner and also the General Immigration Agent for the Great
Northern Railway, around the turn of the 20th Century.
Maxbass is another border town – this time, up north, on the
border with Canada. We’re talking some
80 people here. It dates back only to
1905.
7. Starkweather
Well, the winters are cold. And the summers can get surprisingly hot and dry.
And that’s not to mention the tornados …
Starkweather is actually
another surname. Ancestry.com isn’t too
sure where this one comes from, but thinks it might be a nickname for a “stormy
person.”
Well, that certainly was the
case for Charlie Starkweather. Pardon
the diversion, but Charlie Starkweather was one of the great spree killers of
all time. In 1958, he and his
14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, killed eleven people in a bloody road
trip around Nebraska. He inspired
several films (including Badlands and
Natural Born Killers), a couple of
books, Bruce Springsteen’s song Nebraska,
and a young Stephen King (who kept a scrapbook on the guy).
Oh, the town? I figure there must be some Mr. Starkweather
out there somewhere who it was named after (and who may even have been some relation
to Charlie). This place dates back to
1902, is in the northeast part of the state, and has a little over 100 people.
According to the dictionary,
this place is “a scene of uproar and disorder.”
Hmm, could that really be what the founding fathers meant?
Well, the etymology for this
term does mention a town in Ireland
of the same name (and whose fairs were famous for much drinking and
mayhem). Maybe the founding fathers were
from there.
Another small town in the middle
of nowhere with not a whole lotta information on it. 60 people, northwest part of the state. Someone did have a little fun with it,
though, on a parody news site:
before they lost 25% of their population
Overly what? Overly
cautious? Confident? Critical?
Complicated? Sensitive?
Ah, it’s another surname.
Early settler Hans Overlie gets the credit for this one. One possibility for that surname is the Old
English ofer, meaning “shore,” or
“bank.” So, Overly would most likely
apply to someone who lived in a field or meadow on the shore or bank of some
body of water.
Wow, these places just get tinier and tinier. Overly is barely there. 18 people in total.
At one time, though, Overly was much more. Not too much more, mind you, but ...
Overly was once a big railroad town. Unfortunately, the railroad giveth and the
railroad taketh away. Today, Overly has
14 blocks, but there’s absolutely nothing in four of them.
Yes, everything in this town is made of concrete. All the houses, all the fences. The roadways, the yards, the cars …
Actually, the real story is almost as crazy. Would you believe the town was named after
one William M. Concrete, an early settler?
Ha! Got you
again. This place was actually named
after the final product of the many clay mines in the area.
Okay. So, the actual
town … Well, I’m afraid all we’ve got is
25 people and one business (Hank’s Corner Bar).
There is, however, some sort of Cold War anti-missile radar thingee installation
nearby (officially, the Cavalier Air
Force Station, Perimeter Acquisition Radar Attack
Characterization System).
That Air Force
thingee
(and, yes, it does appear to be made out of concrete)
This one’s a beaut, but what I really like is how comedian
P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) singled this place out in his album Report from Hoople, P.D.Q. Bach on the Air. In case you’ve never heard of him, Schickele
was a very funny comedian whose specialty was classical music. The Hoople album purported to come from the
radio station at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, and
contained things like Beethoven’s Revenge and the Schleptet in E Flat Major,
all performed by I Virtuosi di Hoople.
Oh, the town? 240
people. Founding date: 1889. Source of name: probably some dude name
Hoople (surname is English and a corruption for someone who lived the “up the
hill”). Nickname: “Tatertown.” Location: northeast
North Dakota (???).
Named during the flasher craze of the 1970s …
Well, actually, that’s not totally true. The town dates back to 1902, so I guess there
must have been a previous craze in the early 1900s.
Okay, okay, it’s probably named after some dude. Actually, as it turns out, it was named by some dude but after some babe. In
particular, the founder of the town, William H. Brown, named it after his
niece, Mabel Flasher Vrooman. I’m
assuming Mabel was already taken. Though
even Vrooman seems like an improvement.
I dunno.
Flasher is part of the Bismarck, ND Metropolitan Statistical
Area. It’s got 230 people. I was surprised to learn that such a small
town actually has its own history, Flasher, ND Centennial: 1902 – 2002 ($58, from the ND State Univ. website).
One of the chapters in that book is the
absolutely priceless “Flasher at a Glance.”
Well, the Internets are telling me that this was named after
a coal mining town in Scotland called Zapp.
I’m having a hard time believing that one though. My guess is we’re back to surnames again – in
this particular instance, probably the German Zapf. That means “bung,” or “stopper,” and signals
someone who owned a tavern, or perhaps was just a big boozer.
Coal is big here though. This town of 240, a little northwest of
Bismarck, has coal mines, a coal power plant, and a coal gasification
plant.
What Zap is famous for, however, is the Zip to Zap. This was basically a student happening in
1969, where long-haired hippie freak types were encouraged to converge on this
tiny town in the middle of nowhere. The
2,500 or so students / trouble-makers soon got out of control, and the National
Guard was called in to settle things down – the only time that ever happened in
sleepy and law-abiding North Dakota.
- B-o-r-i-n-g – Valley
City, Woods, New Town
- Short & sweet – Mott,
Kief, Kulm, Ayr, Jud
- Just a little out of
place – Nome, Grand Rapids, Ypsilanti, Michigan, Cleveland, Erie, Niagara,
Buffalo, Cooperstown, Scranton, Trenton, New England, Jamestown (world's largest buffalo), Raleigh,
Palm Beach, Alamo, Havana, Cuba, Lisbon, Wales, Wimbledon, Glasgow, Hague, Hannover,
Strasburg (Lawrence Welk birthplace), Munich, Bremen, Berlin, Dresden, New Leipzig, Warsaw,
Petersburg, Palermo, Verona, Crete, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Walhalla (oldest building in ND)
- Orthographically
challenged – Hamberg, Tokio, Pekin, Mylo, Mantador, Gardena, Dazey,
Sawdwood, Skaar
- Just a little off
color – Buttzville
- Numerically oriented –
Four Bears Village, Four K’s Estate
- Atypical adjectives – Cavalier,
Fried
- Unconventional verbs –
Huff
- Abnormal nouns – Price, Page, Portal, Plaza,
Beach, Bluegrass, Crocus, Crystal, Regent, Rugby (geographical center of North America), Wing, Antler (world's largest historical quilt), Towner, Trotters
- Fun to say – Tuttle,
Gackle, Fingal, Fargo, Pingree, Pembina, Grenora, Gwinner, Guelph, Golva,
Velva, Backoo, Alkabo, Anamoose, Marmarth
- Hard to say – New
Hradec, Omemee
- Just plain weird – Fryburg,
Spiritwood, Pick City, Town and Country, Inkster, Devils Lake, White
Shield, Wild Rice, Scenic East (it's on the border with Montana), South Heart, Bonetrail
- I’d like to introduce
you to – Alice, Olga, Norma, Ray, Leroy, Leonard, Max, Burt, Barney, Clyde,
Calvin, Arthur, Alfred, Milton, Horace (ND's largest tree), Hamlet, Voltaire, Bismarck, Glen
Ullin, Raymond Lee
- Ghost towns – Lark,
Lostwood, Turtle, Expansion, Deep, Kidville
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