{"id":9029,"date":"2011-08-14T08:01:53","date_gmt":"2011-08-14T13:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=9029"},"modified":"2022-01-30T11:11:12","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T16:11:12","slug":"mmm-doughnut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/mmm-doughnut\/","title":{"rendered":"Mmm… Doughnut"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My mind gravitates back to doughnuts (or is it donuts?) following up on a long-ago article, the Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole<\/a>. The concept fascinates me. It occurs when a town completely surrounds a separately-governed entity, generally another town. That leaves a doughnut town — one with the hole in it — and a doughnut-hole town, the one occupying the void like a tasty cream filling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pondering Doughnuts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Doughnuts.<\/a>
Yum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That got me thinking about the etymology of doughnut. I get the dough part. What about the nut? Thank goodness for Google which led me to a plausible explanation<\/a>: the original doughnut was a dough ball that resembled a nut when cooked, I guess because it was round and somewhat brownish. Doughnuts didn’t gain their ring shape until somewhat later, perhaps due to problems with gooey uncooked centers. Thus, a doughnut two hundred years ago resembled what today one might call a doughnut hole, I mean the snack and not the void. No, I have no idea where this is leading either. Let’s move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve discovered that New Jersey seems to be an epicenter for doughnut towns. Virginia also has its share due to its crazy system of independent cities<\/a>, but lets cast that aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Jersey seems to have an overabundance of towns<\/a> in general: 566 municipalities, and by my quick unscientific count as I squint at a map, 22 of them completely filling the center of a doughnut with no neighbor other than the surrounding town. Magnificent!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One situation has even drawn the attention of the Newark Star-Ledger<\/a> as part of their series, “New Jersey Towns that Shouldn’t Exist.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Chester Oddity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chester Township envelopes Chester Borough completely. The township has a larger geographic footprint and a population of about 8,000 inhabitants. The borough is much smaller both in size and population, with about 1,600 people, but with considerably greater density. Google Maps doesn’t do a great job with town boundaries but you should be able to see the area of Chester Borough, the doughnut hole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n