Ever wondered how a place got its name! There is a great resource book that talks about it. Its Called “Names on the Land” by George R.Stewart and was published in 1945. It took me a while to find a copy through second hand book dealers. I bought it about twelve years ago and have gone through it several times. My copy was originally bought by a Mrs Arthur E Horton in Paultney, Vermont. I have signed it below her with my particulars and I hope if anyone owns it after me, they do they same. Mr. Stewart wrote several other books including a biography of Brett Harte. On the Publisher's page there is the following Notation: “It is manufactured under emergency conditions and complies with the government's request to conserve essential materials in every way possible.
While the book is wonderful to go through from front to back, I have sometimes gone to the index first and find a place I am interested in and then go to the page to find out how the place was named.
The older a town is, the more likely it has a name relating to some sort of English or even French Royalty. Georgia is a Latinized version of George for King George, and Saint Louis is name after one of the Louis Kings of France. There are whole towns and counties in Connecticut that have the same name as English Counties! If a lake has Lake before the name, it either was named by someone with French Heritage or is a Major Lake. Cincinnati is named after the Roman Legislator Cincinnatus. Utica New York was named after a city of Ancient North Africa and Troy New York, was named after the battle thereof.
Up Until Congress was discussing the Utah Territory, it had always accepted local wishes in naming a territory or State. The power that was in Utah, Brigham Young suggested Deseret, this was not acceptable to Congress and it was at the instigation of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who was also the father in law of John C. Fremont, that we became the Territory of and later the State of Utah. John C. Fremont also named the Golden Gate in California. California comes from the Spanish as do most of the names of Coastal cities and missions in the golden state. In some cases Mr. Stewart even provides the name of the person who actually decided on this or that name.
After that, members of Congress on a powerful committee were responsible for deciding the names of states, The first proposed name for Nevada was Washoe, and while they didn't get it for the state it is one of the large Counties. Many counties in this country are also named for President's, generals and other well know personages. Even though the Oregon Territory was adopted long before they petitioned to become a state, there were some that wanted to called it Lincoln. Some proposed Columbia for what later became Washington State, at which time it was decided that there would not be another state named after a President. My two favorite examples of Congress acting, is where Wyoming was named Wyoming because someone liked how it sounded, and on hearing the suggested name for a state, one congressman, yelled up the stairs to his wife, do you know what Montana means, she answered that it was a mountainous place, and that was good enough for him. When the New Mexico territory was petitioning to be a state they wanted Nuevo Mexico, and even Montezuma was suggested, but someone else suggested Acoma so that it would come in the alphabet before Alabama.
Finally New Mexico was agreed upon, although there were protests that people would think it is part of Mexico. Five weeks later Arizona was admitted as a state and all the lower forty eight had been named and admitted by 1912. I certainly remember when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states in 1959. Alaska was admitted on January 3rd and Hawaii was admitted on August 21st.
In a country as large as ours, there is a lot of repetition, If I plug Eureka into by Garmin GPS I find many towns named Eureka, as well as Virginia and Silver City, and I haven't been to either Eureka Kansas, or Eureka Arkansas and have always wanted to go to Silver City, New Mexico!
One interesting place I have gone to is the Trinity Site in White Sands New Mexico. It is the site where the atomic bomb was first detonated in 1945 and was named by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb; based on a poem by John Donne. The site is only open to the public two days a year. The first Saturday in October and April . In 2005 I rode there with my friend DeVern on our Bmw motorcycles. Over the last twenty years I have probably ridden over 150,000 miles on motorcycle trips wit DeVern. Before we went, I re-read “The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes and after going there I read the Biography of Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Marin J. Sherwin called, “American Prometheus.”
The Trinity site is somewhat distant from Los Alamos, which was the name of the Boys School that predated the installation they built there. When the Government was looking for a site for the Manhattan Project, one of the suggest sites was Oak City Canyon and Oak City, near Delta Utah. They ran into a problem securing the necessary water rights. Oppenheimer had spent summers on some property his family owned in the desert of New Mexico and remembered the defunct boys school. In about 1955 I remember going to Los Alamos with my family to visit some friends of my parents. It was still a closed city, and we had to check in and out of security when we arrived and I learned years later that my parents friends had to submit our names, etc weeks prior to the trip to have us go through the approval process.
Today for the Trinity site, we just rode through a security gate and followed the markers to the site. All that is really left it part of the metal from one of the legs of the tower. A plaque marks the spot and gives the time 5:29:45 and the date, July 16, 1945. The McDonald ranch house where the bomb was assembled has been virtually wrapped in plastic and is a bus ride away from the site. We met people there who come year after year, and most of the motel where we stayed the night before in Socorro were also heading out to the site.
I would like to tell you that I sensed a profound sense of something at the site. I have been to some important historical sights and the invasion beaches in France, and did fell the profundity of something. At Trinity there was nothing, and part of me wondered why they just didn't build a replica near the highway so that tourists could visit it anytime. Maybe my sense of feeling nothing was in part because I did remember what Oppenheimer said after the first blast, He remembered a line from the BHAGAVAD-GITA, where Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him he takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am Death the Destroyer of Worlds.”
I am not sure I would go to the Trinity site again, but there are certainly other sites of historical importance I would like to visit.
