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Roach, Worms, and Hippo: How these 8 towns got their unusual names
20.11.2023 - 13:33 / nationalgeographic.com
America’s town names often venerate famous historical figures and benefactors, or borrow place names from the country where settlers originated.
Yet dozens of locales across the United States have monikers that match animal names. Take Bat Cave, North Carolina. After the movie Batman was released in 1989, mail to this tiny town in North Carolina surged. Movie fans were apparently eager to get a bat postmark returned from the rural locale, which is named after local bat caves.
In the area’s Bluerock Mountain caves, five bat species once hibernated, “but now we only find eastern small-footed, tricolored, and big brown bats due to severe population declines related to white-nose syndrome,” says Katherine Etchison, a wildlife biologist at the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. The caves, which are owned by The Nature Conservancy, are not open to the public, she says. But the area’s bats are represented on every piece of mail.
Beyond Bat Cave, here’s the surprising, quirky history behind some of our other favorite animal-themed town names across the U.S.
Five kinds of roaches can be found in Missouri homes, but this unincorporated town in central Missouri is not named after the resilient bugs. Instead, it’s named after a family of early settlers of that same name.
Hippo was once a slang term for a hypochondriac, and this town in Kentucky was named in the early 1900s after resident Bee Madison Craft, who was known for being an epic complainer, according to Robert Rennick’s 1987 book Kentucky Place Names.
Civil War General John Gibbon, now buried at Arlington National Cemetery, led the famous Iron Brigade of Union troops even though much of his family joined the Confederate Army, including three of his brothers. Communities in central Nebraska and Minnesota subsequently chose to honor him. The Nebraska town’s first colonists arrived in April 1871 and lived in railroad box cars while building their homes. Its Minnesota counterpart, settled in 1865, had a population of 545 by 1900, though today its numbers have climbed to around 800.
Although a number of U.S. states have official state dogs—beginning with Maryland in 1964, when the legislature voted to choose the Chesapeake Bay retriever—it does not appear that Oregon has a particular love for beagles. Postmaster William Beagle, who likely lived in the mid-1800s, was the inspiration for this unincorporated town’s name, according to Oregon Geographic Names, penned by father-son team Lewis A. McArthur and Lewis L. McArthur. This town’s post office was established in November 1885 but discontinued in April 1941.
Though an invasive species of quickly reproducing earthworm called the Asian jumping worm has invaded the state in recent years, the Nebraska
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