US Namesake Towns That Didn’t Quite Live Up to Their Illustrious Predecessors

There sure are a lotta “inhabited places” in the ol’ US of A. So, what to call ‘em all?

Well, there’s all sorts of possibilities: original Indian names (Chicago, Omaha, Miami), descriptives (Las Vegas, Long Beach, Salt Lake City), famous people (Washington, St Louis, Raleigh) …

Another possibility is to call them after other places. A lot of these are simply after cities or towns where the original settlers came from – Boston, Hartford, Newark …

Some of these, though, are a little more aspirational. Memphis, Syracuse, Troy & Athens, for example, are all named after famous places from the ancient past. 

Egypt or Tennessee?

Unfortunately, things don’t also turn out as the town fathers had hoped. Imagine, for example, calling yourself Rome, then having a population of 17. Or, how about an Athens in the middle of the flatlands of Kansas?

Methodology

1. Identify the most famous cities around the world
2. Find the smallest similarly-named town I can in the US
3. Compare them in a table

London

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
UK	9M	43	Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Bucking-ham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, British Museum, Wimbledon	Chaucer, Elizabeth I, Victoria, Dickens, William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, David Beckham, Alfred Hitchcock	Capital
Indiana	65	1852			Site of mid-air collision that killed 78 people

 

Paris

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
France	2.1M	250 BC	Eifel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Champs-Elysees, Pere Lachaise, Louvre, Sorbonne	Joan of Arc, Louis XIV, Napoleon, DeGaulle, Voltaire, Des-cartes, Sartre, Pasteur, Marie Curie, Debussy	Capital, City of Light
Virginia	44	1810	Ashby Inn & Restaurant, Lavender Green Florist

Rome

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Italy	2.7M	753 BC	Forum, Coliseum, Pantheon, Vatican, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps	Augustus, Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, Raphael, Fellini, Maria Montessori	Capital, Eternal City
Ohio	83	1835	Methodist church, post office	Melissa Jones, mayor	Also known as “Stout”

Athens

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Greece	3.6M	3000 NC	Acropolis, Parthenon, Agora, Lyceum, Temple of Zeus	Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides	Capital, cradle of Western civilization, birthplace of democracy
Kansas	62	1872		Fred Beckler, E.D. Plumb, Richard Albertson, Robert White, John McAffee (1st settlers); Thomas B. Johns, Robert Day, Jacob Gilmore, A.S. Hoag (1st town officers)	“The people are moral, intelligent, industrious and prosperous, and the society is unsurpassed.” [ksgenweb.org]

 

Florence

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Italy	362K	9th Cent. BC	Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, Uffizi, David, Bargello, Boboli Gardens, Santa Croce, Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio	Medicis, Dante, Machiavelli, Boccaccio, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Galileo	Cradle of the Renaissance
Illinois	17		Bridge across Illinois River		2nd-least populated municipality in Illinois

Cairo

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Egypt	10.3M	300	Pyramids, Sphinx, Memphis, Heliopolis, National Museum	Amenhotep, Tutankhamun, Nasser, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Omar Sharif	Capital
West Virginia	174	1895	Town hall (on National Register of Historic Places), North Bend Rail Trail, Cairo Suspension Foot Bridge		“A hidden gem known for its natural beauty, historic sites, and outdoor activities” [onlyinyourstate. com]

Berlin

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Germany	3.9M	1200s	Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Berlin Wall Memorial, Charlottenburg Palace, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church	Frederick the Great, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Red Baron (Manfred von Richtofen), Gropius, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Witt	Capital
North Dakota	31	1887	Grain elevators	Milton Young, US senator

Moscow

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Russia	13.1M	Neolithic period	Kremlin, Red Square, St Basil’s Cathedral, Metro stations, GUM department store, Gorky Park, Bolshoi Theatre	Peter the Great, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Wasilly Kandinsky, Alexander Scriabin, Boris Pasternak, Sergey Brin	Capital, the Third Rome
Arkansas	8	Pre Civil War	Methodist Church & Cemetery (Arkansas Register of Historic Places)		Site of Civil War battle, the Action at Moscow

Statuary Hall – Lamest Subjects

Are you familiar with Statuary Hall? Basically, each state is allowed two statues of their famous sons and daughters to place in the US Capitol.

These statues include such famous Americans as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Samuel Adams, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay. Unfortunately, they also include no-names like Daisy Lee Gaston Bates, George Laird Shoup, Oliver Hazard Perry Norton, William Henry Harrison Beadle, and Henry Mower Rice.

Which got me thinking … Who are the most obscure figures among these 100 statues?

Colorado

Florence Sabin

• Doctor
• Med school prof
• Was not behind that vaccine you’re thinking of

Alternate:  Kit Carson

Florida

John Gorrie

• Doctor
• Created an ice-making machine
• “Impoverished, … sought to raise money to manufacture his machine, but the venture failed when his partner died.” [www.visitthecapitol.gov/apps/nshc/]
• “Humiliated by criticism, financially ruined, and his health broken, … died in seclusion.”

Alternate:  Osceola

Frances E Willard

• President, Evanston College for Women
• President, National Women's Temperance Union, Women's Christian Temperance Union, National Council of Women

Alternates:  Lincoln, Jane Addams, Carl Sandburg, Frank Lloyd Wright

Kentucky

Ephraim McDowell

• Surgeon
• Performed the first ovariotomy in the US
• “Removed a gall stone and repaired a hernia [for James Polk]”
• Helped found Centre College

Alternates:  George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Muhammad Ali

Minnesota

Maria L Sanford

• Taught at Univ. of Minnesota
• “Traveled throughout the United States delivering more than 1,000 patriotic speeches”

Alternate:  Hubert Humphrey

Nevada

Sarah Winnemucca

• Acted as go-between for her tribe and the US Army
• “As a spokesperson for her people … gave over 300 speeches to win support for them, and she met with President Rutherford B. Hayes and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz”
• Wrote a book
• Started a school

Alternate:  Howard Hughes

New Mexico

Po’Pay

• Convicted of sorcery, flogged
• Organized the Pueblo Revolt

NOTE: “No image or written description of Po'pay is known to exist”

Alternate:  Geronimo

Oregon

Jason Lee

• Missionary
• “Helped to draft a petition for the establishment of a territorial government, and … journeyed east to present the petition in Washington”
• “Presided over the preliminary meeting for territorial organization held at Champoeg in 1841”
• Helped found Willamette College

Oops, wrong one

John McLoughlin

Doctor

• Head honcho, Columbia Dept., Hudson Bay Company
• Eventual American citizen

Alternates: Linus Pauling, Chief Joseph, Wayne Morse

South Dakota

William Henry Harrison Beadle

• Brigadier general in Civil War
• Surveyor general of Dakota Territory
• State house rep, superintendent of public instruction
• President, Madison State Normal School

Alternates: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull

Utah

Martha Hughes Cannon

• Doctor
• State senator
• “Gave speeches at the World's Columbian Exposition, the 50th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, and testified before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary”
• Practiced polygamy, being the 4th wife of church leader Angus Cannon

Alternates: John Wesley Powell, Philo T Farnsworth

Washington

Mother Joseph

• Nun, missionary
• Architect
• Built hospitals, schools & orphanages

Alternates: Chief Seattle, Scoop Jackson

West Virginia

• John Kenna
• US rep & senator
• Died at 45

Alternates: Pearl Buck, Booker T Washington, Chuck Yeager

Wyoming

Esther Hobart Morris

• Suffragette 
• Justice of the peace

Washakie

• Negotiated for Shoshone reservation 
• Helped found a school

Alternates: Buffalo Bill, Black Elk, Alan Simpson