Thursday, June 21, 2007

strange town names in wisconsin

i've been going blind (and numb) this week making maps for a ground-water comprehensive planning website that we're building. in particular, i'm detailing a pollution-susceptibility series, which consists of 6 maps per county. there are 72 counties in wisconsin, so you do the math.

the one highlight has been catching the hilarious town names, and i'm only seeing the towns that are considered "major cities" in whatever GIS data layer the maps were originally built from. here are some of my favourites, but i'm sure there are plenty others in wisconsin's minor cities.

+ Land O' Lakes (just a marketing ploy to sell butter? think again.)
+ Liberty Pole (what a great stripper name)
+ Hustler
+ Euren (just say it out loud)
+ Neopit
+ Combined Locks (i swear this is a town name, not a GIS glitch. here's the town website)
+ Dresser
+ Footville
+ Winter (how ironic)
+ Fontana-on-Geneva Lake (the new Stratford-upon-Avon?)
+ Lake Five
+ Tony (not Anthony, just Tony. just like my boyfriend Tony, who is also not an Anthony.)

i'm sure you've got some hilarious town names... care to share?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lake Five sounds like a pop band name. I really think, however, that Hustler could use some great marketing to their advantage. What 20 year old boy wouldn't want to live in Hustler????!! Love your list!

Anonymous said...

You barely scraped the top of the barrel for WI. How about Beaver? or Gay Mills?

Cliff said...

Here's a whole bunch more:

http://reallyweirdplacenames.blogspot.com/2014/01/wisconsin.html