Weird and wonderful place names

[drunkenwildmage]

In Illinois.

Gays (Home of a 2 story Outhouse)
Effingham (Where you will have an effing good time)

Around my Area:

Hicksville, oh
Hell, MI (already been mentioned)
Texas, oh and Florida, oh (Along OLD US 24)

[protege]

Don't forget Paris, Texas. And I'm pretty sure there's a Lisbon, Texas, as well. Too lazy to check right now.

I don't know about Lisbon, TX...but there is a Moscow in Pennsylvania, as well as a Cairo in Illinois

Closer to home, we have Beaver County, Beaver Falls, and Big Beaver. I'm sure you all can snicker at those

Also nearby, are the towns of...

Spaces Corners
California
Charleroi (the "other" one is in Belgium)
Eighty Four (home of the lumber company)
Economy
Prosperity
Glasgow
Gringo (unincorporated, and no longer shows up on maps)
Houston
Indiana
Lick Run
Mars
Penn (Yep, Penn, Pennsylvania)
South Park
Standard Shaft (usually referred to as "Shaft" by residents)
White Barn (the entire town consists of a white barn and a mailbox)

Some of the more interesting town names include Acme, Elephant, Japan, Library, Number Thirty-Seven, Reading No 3, Rough and Ready, White Horse, Three Tons, Wawa, and Windsor Castle. Most of these were originally mining towns, and were named after the mining companies. Most are largely forgotten now.

[Chromatix]

One of the more famous railway stations in Wales reputedly has the longest name in the world. On most maps and destination monitors, for reasons of space, it is abbreviated to "Llanfair PG" or "Llanfairpwll" - but the full name essentially reads as a description of where the village is.



Another common but amusing quirk of railway stations is that they were often built where it was convenient to put the railway, rather than directly beside the village it nominally served. In some cases this resulted in several miles' travel to get between one and the other, and railway companies often - but not always - lampshaded this by naming the station, for example, "Maentwrog Road" if it was merely in the general vicinity of Maentwrog.

The highest-altitude station in England (and Britain's highest mainline station, not counting oddities like the Snowdon Mountain Railway) is currently Dent, high in the Pennine hills. The village of Dent is nearly five miles away and at a considerably lower altitude. The railway, of course, had been built as a through route, and was having quite enough difficulty simply getting through the terrain as it was, without diverting to serve this very small settlement.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

I have been to the towns of:

Zanesville Ohio
Kilbride Ontario
Dorking Ontario
WaWa Ontario
Kilworthy Ontario
Swastika Ontario

Also my favourite lakes:
Painkiller lake, Ontario
Go Home Lake, Ontario

And the provincial (national?) park:
Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, Alberta

[Dentarthurdent]

Oooh, I forgot about Dafter, MI.