What makes a town a town?

I drove from NJ to IN and back a few weeks ago. In PA is the spot that boasts “highest elevation on I-80 east of the Mississippi”; I believe it was ca. 2,550 feet.

Choose: a town is a town if someone there says it is one. A town is a town if someone there has to pay taxes. A town is a town if they have someone appointed or elected or chosen to be in charge. A town is a town if it is legally so contituted by the state which it is in.

Question: what makes a mountain a mountain?

In PA is the spot that boasts “highest elevation on I-80 east of the Mississippi”; I believe it was ca. 2,550 feet.

I have experience with this place because I know that when I pass it I have gone too far and missed my exit when driving from Dallas, PA to Pittsburgh. This has happened several times.

Post #3 is correct. Pennsylvania, for example, contains one town.

Everything else in Pennsylvania is either a “city”, a “borough” (both of which are incorporated and have borders), or a “township” (which covers all the less populated, unincorporated areas). A small town with no borders is legally considered a “village”.

The previous statement is true for New York as well, if you replace the word “township” with “town” and “village” with “hamlet”.

The real question is, who cares?

Not to get all persnickety, but the Eisenhower Expressway is actually I-290. And I don’t think anybody who’s not from Chicago has any idea what the Eisenhower Expressway is.

Actually, it would be an interesting (to me, anyway) project to document how various metropolitan areas refer to their highways. Chicago tends to use names (both famous and obscure – e.g., the Dan Ryan), whereas the Bay Area uses numbers (101, 280, etc.).

I realize that this is the most boring comment ever written in the whole history of the Internets.

As far as local appellations for highways: I-376 is the Parkway East, and I-279, depending on which side of downtown you are on, is either the Parkway North or the Parkway West. There are insider names for the bridges, the tunnels (for some reason there is the Squirrel Hill *tunnel* but the Liberty *tubes*….) I think it’s all a plot to confuse tourists.

unf (#7): As a native of the Bay Area, I always use numbers. And I’m always puzzled by Southern Californians who are, so far as I can tell, the only people in the U.S. who use the definite article with numbers to identify roads. Thus, while someone from the Bay Area will take “Highway 101” or simply “101,” someone from LA will take “the 101.”

Incidentally, there are now two Pennsylvania towns, the second being McCandless, PA in Allegheny County, which has been an incorporated town since 1975.

While we’re on this topic, anyone know why the major road in St. Louis called Kingshighway is written as one word?

“In PA is the spot that boasts “highest elevation on I-80 east of the Mississippi”; I believe it was ca. 2,550 feet.”

The LOWEST point in Wyoming is the Belle Fourche River at 3,099 feet above sea level.

A town is a town if it is legally so contituted by the state which it is in.

Yeppy: it’s all about incorporation, unless ‘town’ is a definition that doesn’t require incorporation. It’s especially notable in the case of cities, which is guaranteed to tickle Brits driving American backroads who pass between ‘city limit’ signs in 30 seconds flat.

A coummunity of people makes a town. Now if Buford has two then it is about time that we should move there.

ben,

A friend of mine who is from Cincinnati but lived in Phoenix for a while uses “the” in front of interstate numbers. I think she picked this up in Cincinnati, but I’m not sure. I have also heard it done in Chicago traffic reports.

#13 –Naw, that’s common in Western New York too. Buffalonians will take “The 290” or “The 33.”

The fact that Southern California has taken up the practice kinda vindicates Dar Williams, though.

North of the 49th in Alberta the minimum recognized population centre (this should be good for a guffaw) is a settlement : qualifying requires 6 residents.
Villages and towns, on the other hand, are a vanishing breed, as there are tax advantages to being part of a county (formerly “rural municipality”).

Maybe its “the Bayshore” down on The Peninsula, but to us in the East Bay, 101 is 101. I’ve heard of “the Nimitz”, but have never been entirely sure what it referred to except that it is near to Oakland.

Also, “the 5” is supposedly, only the’d after the Grapevine.

As another life-long Bay Arean, I’ll agree that 101 is ‘101’. I’ve definitely heard it called Bayshore, but ‘101’ or ‘highway 101’ is the standard name. “The Nimitz”, in my experience, is just the stretch of 880 that goes up the East Bay from San Jose, and it’s usually just called ‘880’ except in some traffic reports. 17 is just ’17’.

In France they have several municipalities with a population of zero.

The Warren, MacArthur, Nimitz: 24, 580, 17. Also the 50 and the 80.

Despite having thrived in the (east side of the) Bay Area from ’68 to ’77, I now need maps to find which road goes where. I wasn’t aware, for instance, that the Oakland’s ugly old chunk of the 17 (Nimitz) had been renamed the 880 until it pancaked in the Lomo-Prieta quake (which also took down the Embarcadero freeway stub, blessings be upon it at least for that.)

Occasional lengths of the 101 are historically congruent with El Camino Real, points along which are marked with signs recalling Junipero Serra’s missions’ bells. (I’d rather see dodecahedrons, commemorating Aristotle’s rejoinder to Alexander that there is no royal road to geometry, but sense is scarce.)

Look, everybody eventually refers to roads by their visible markers. When the kids learn to drive they talk about the 5 or the 55 or the 405, not the Santa Ana (or the Golden State) or the Newport (Costa Mesa) or San Diego (Santa Monica).

On the right coast I think they refer to the 95.

You leave from Saint Louis, Joplin, Missouri …

>The real question is, who cares?

Well, I guess it’s just something to chuckle over mostly.

But deep down, despite the trolls accusing all of us as being free-spending big government freaks, I suspect everybody vaguely believes that something like a “town” requires a at least a minimum set of bureacratic paperwork somewhere in the deepest recesses of the state’s filing system. And it seems like it could affect things in a legal way in terms of jurisdiction over a number of crimes and civil actions.

So having a town of two could well cost a state more than two-man years every fiscal cycle just to maintain the fact that it is, indeed, a town.

And that just seems wrong.

On the right coast I think they refer to the 95

No, it’s just “95,” at least in my neck of the woods. On the other hand, it’s the Thruway, the Taconic, the Hutch. Definite articles are for names, not numbers.

Doing it old school –
technically a hamlet is a village not big enough to afford a church and a city is any urban cluster big enough to put up a cathedral.

It has always been my theory that Southern Californians regard their freeways as the original, Ur-Freeways. The freeways of which all others are pale imitations, thus the definite article.

I have lived in a number of places in the US including Northern CA, but not Southern CA. Nevertheless I noticed on a recent visit to LA that I immediately began using the definite article when referring to freeways. It’s a most powerful gestalt.

MKK

“I had no idea I was that high up had it not been pointed out on this sign as the roads on the way weren’t particular steep.”

That’s why the railroad, then I-80 after it go through Wyoming rather than Colorado.

On the right coast I think they refer to the 95

No, it’s just “95,” at least in my neck of the woods.

Or, in my neck of the woods, “128.” But I think that usage may be on the way out.

Hey, if Ma and Pa Buford of Wyoming say they are a town, they are a town, dammit!

As a Southern Californian, I find myself referring to other people’s freeways with the definite article. For example, I grew up near “the 95”, which is wrong. But what about “the 101” which escapes definite article-dom the further you get from Southern California? Clearly, it is “the 101” in Hollywood and “101” in San Francisco, even in San Mateo. But what about in Santa Barbara? SLO? Should I say, “On my way up north, I only took the 101 to the 170 to the 5, but on my way back down I took 101 all the way?”

The named freeways thing really is perverse. First, only traffic reporters and people over fifty use the names. Second, the names and numbers diverge wildly. The 110 is the Harbor Freeway south of downtown and the Pasadena Freeway north of downtown. The “Hollywood Freeway” is the 101 until it switches to the 170, and the “Ventura Freeway” is the 134 until it becomes the 101 at the same time that the 101 ceases to be the “Hollywood Freeway.” I think it’s because the 170, which is a relatively short stretch of freeway even if you factor in the part of Highland Avenue that is considered part of it and was until recently ruled by CalTrans instead of LADOT, would feel small and insignificant if you took “Hollywood” away from its existence. I don’t remember: does I-95 have these kind of issues?

Everyone, please let me know if I am boring this weblog to tears.

Mr. Welty,

The reason I spoke about the small bit of Wyoming I am familiar with, and one of the reasons it may be an exception, is that the railroad apparently deliberately built its line following the lines of coal. Hence those towns in SE Wyoming like Rock Springs had a raison d’etre after they built the railroad.

If anyone is traveling I80 across Wyoming, I recomment Rock Springs as a stop. Apparently they won a law suit against the coal companies (or the railroads?) a number of years back for completely undermining the town and used the money for an attractive sports complex (only seen, not used) and conversion of the old courthouse into one of the most attractive museums of American life 1880-1940 I have ever visited.

Some may recall that in Dick Cheney’s pre-9/11 New Yorker interview he stated that after he dropped out of Yale the way he was able to get back on his feet was by taking advantage of the good-paying union jobs then available in Rock Springs — not to mention the free tuition at the state university. Talk about pulling up ladders!

Someone said that I80 in Wyoming avoided the mountains so less scenery — perhaps true, but watching the Uintas off to the south for a hundred miles or so is a fond memory.

Hmm… in my four years at Stanford I picked up the habit of referring to “the 101” and “the 280”, and I do it for East Bay highways too (I still haven’t gotten used to the California term “freeway”). Which is odd, because everyone tells me that’s a SoCal thing. But I guess Stanford mixes the parts of California enough that you find SoCal people saying “hella” and NorCalers taking “the 280”.