Month: February 2015
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Small Change, Big Difference
It struck me that Cheyenne (the capital city of the U.S. state of Wyoming) and Cayenne (the capital city of the French overseas department of Guyane française) sounded remarkably similar in name. Yet, as locations go they couldn’t be more dissimilar even though only a couple of letters and a slight voice inflection separated them.…
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Good Fortuna
Fortuna was the Roman goddess of prosperity and luck. That would be an excellent name for any location hoping for some of that mojo rub off. I was aware of a Fortuna in California (map), probably the largest Fortuna in the United States. People there lived in the heart of redwood country. I’m sure it’s…
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County Divided
Look to the far northwestern corner of North Dakota, right up next to Canada and Montana. There sits a county with a curious name, Divide (map). It appeared somewhat rectangular like many other counties on the sparsely-populated Great Plains. Few natural features could take the place of arbitrary straight lines in this emptiness. I’d encountered…
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Beaufort or Badminton
Two towns sharing the exact same name sat not too far from each other in the Carolinas. Colonial settlers arrived on various points along that swath of coastline at around the same time. So this increased the odds of a relationship between identical names. Indeed, that was the case albeit with a twist. The Beauforts…
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American Angola
I discovered distant relatives during my ongoing family research who lived in Angola, New York about a century ago. That seemed like an odd location for a town to carry such a name. I wondered if it could have been a coincidence. Maybe early settlers corrupted a Native American word used by the Iroquois who…
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Circleville Survived
The squared circle wasn’t the only fascinating story hiding in Circleville, Ohio (map). The town survived and grew in spite of its early experiment with urban renewal. I’d wondered how a town so named could have escaped my attention for the last several years. In the meantime I’d felt a weird sense of déjà vu…
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Square the Circle
Twelve Mile Circle is always on the lookout for circles for the completely obvious reason. Seeing Circleville, Ohio appearing on a map drew my attention even as I searched for something completely different. My mind raced as I abandoned my earlier effort. I shifted my attention to the pursuit of geographic hoops, bands and rings.…
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Cumberland
People have expressed a couple of distinct thoughts as I’ve discussed my upcoming bike trip along the Great Allegheny Passage. The immediate reaction was that I must be crazy and then I’d explain that I’m not intending to ride it all in a single day. The second was confusion about its endpoint in Cumberland. Multiple…