Throughout American History, how were towns named?

During gold rushes, villages literally popped up over a weekend.

Suppliers, prostitutes, dry grocers, hardware dealers, booze suppliers, etc would set up their wagons and tents over a couple of days to service the miners.

As the miners found gold they would purchase more stuff from the suppliers.

More suppliers would show up, more gold was found, more money was spend, more people showed up.

A smart supplier / merchant could get rich off of one of these towns.

I read once that more than one tough skinned, ambitious prostitute could make enough money in a very short period of time to either leave and live on in grand style, open up her own "house of ill repute" or purchase her own saloon.

Keep in mind, once the gold vein dried up, many of these little towns would empty out as quickly as they were set up.

Towns were named many different ways.

A gold town was probably named for the person who discovered it or the area the gold was found in, like Sutter's Mill in the California gold rush, gold being discovered by Mr Sutter at his grist mill.

The railroads name many of the towns.

The founder of the town, basically the first guy who decided stop traveling and build a cabin.

More names than you can imagine were the names the local native called it, for instance, Chicago means "place that stinks" (it had a lot of wild onions growing in the area),.

North and South Dakota were simply named for the Dakota Native American tribe of the Sioux Nation, as in Dakota-Sioux and Lakota-Sioux.

You were speaking of the Black Hills ..... there's the Badlands up there.

The Lakota called the area "Makhóšiča", literally bad land, while French trappers called it "les mauvaises terres à traverser" – "the bad lands to cross". The Spanish called it tierra baldía ("waste land").

Miami, Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Minneapolis, Spokane, Tacoma, Tulsa, Tallahassee, Chattanooga--- just to name a FEW ---- are ALL native names.

And topography ..... town by a river, River City, a town near Wichita and a water fall, city of Wichita Falls, a town by the bloody red pole with dead animals hung on it marking the boundary of native hunting grounds, call it Baton Rouge (red stick).

The History Channel has a special that is brilliant, called the Making of America, that actually diagrams exactly how towns popped up and how they grew and where their people came from.

Their website will tell you when it is showing again.

Often towns were named after people. Either one of the first people to settle the area or someone famous at the time. Others were often named after local Indian tribes or perhaps after a natural feature in the area, like Rapids, Mount, Creek etc.

Towns usually came about as groups of settlers located in an area. Often they were drawn together by river access or nearness to natural treasure, such as farmland. Other towns started as or around forts that were set up to fight Indians etc.

The black hills would allow you to use Mount,Stone, Hill, Rock in the name. Good luck and have fun with it!

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