Place names are fascinating. They tell you about history, local characters, the frustrations of the government saying, “Nope, can’t do that, second choice is taken, and you must be grammatically correct in a foreign language.*”
Descriptive place names include Plainview (which is very flat and had no trees), Pampa (“plains”), Amarillo, (yellow dirt exposed in one of the creek valleys), Vega (fertile meadow), Seneca (originally “cieneguilla del burro,” or small swampy place where the burro got stuck), Black Mesa (volcanic remnant with dark stone lurks near the town), North Platte (guess which branch of the river it’s on?), and Halfway, which is a road intersection and school equidistant between county seats. It is also home to one of my favorite churches, the Halfway Baptist Church. Related to that is Dalhart, which straddles the Dallam and Hartley county lines. Nueces had pecan trees, still does. You can guess what was memorable about the site of the town of Cactus.
Some places are named for the reason the town exists or existed. Acme, Texas was home to a gypsum and sheetrock plant. Today it is where Orvan Taurus picks up deliveries, and a small sign by the highway. Phillips was a company town for an oil refinery and associated industries run by Phillips 66. Four Way is a four way intersection. Cactus also took its name from an armaments factory that was there, or perhaps the factory was named for the flora. Sources differ.
Place names can also tell you about who was in the area, Omaha, Papillion and Belleview and Fontanelle, Council Bluffs … Indians, then the French, then Anglo-American appeared and left traces on the land. Sometimes place names are translations, like Red River instead of Rito Colorado or La Rouge. Chillicothe is a Shawnee tribal clan name, designating the location of the head of the clan of the chieftains. Thus where you find that as a place name, you would have found Shawnee-speaking peoples.
History is also caught in names. Crazy Woman Creek in Wyoming is named for an insane women who lived there. Why she went mad is not clearly known, but her presence was described by both Indians and fur trappers. Stonewall, Lubbock, Houston, Denver, all named for political leaders or military figures.
Idalou? Named for two sisters of the town founder. According to local legend, Slapout, OK got its name from the founder’s sister, who proclaimed the town store to be “slap out” of whatever customers came to get.
*San Angelo was supposed to be San Angela, after the wife of the founder of the civilian settlement. The USPS threw a fit, because in Spanish, you can’t have a masculine descriptor with a feminine noun. So San Angelo it became [pronounced S’nANjello, all one word].
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
This was apparently not that unusual, as Slapout AL will attest.
Tightwad, MO.
Truth or Consequences, NM, a victim of TV.
The name backstories are often more fun.
Or aggravating.
Just a bit outside of Chattanooga, TN is Stonecipher Lake.
And I never found anyone who knew WHY it had that fricking name.
And sometimes, that history tells a story.
Mt. Helen-Dee overlooking Wells, Nevada, for instance.
Wells had started as a mining town, but the railroad was making it prosperous. The railroad men were bringing their wives, those who’d made their stake were ordering mail order brides, and the demographics of the town were changing rapidly. And the one thing the newcomers were adamant about, was that the brothel had to go. The city fathers dutifully complied, and passed an ordnance against prostitution. Now, you didn’t successfully run a cat house in the Old West without being very saaavy, and more than a bit ruthless. Miss Helen and Miss Dee were both. They’d kept things civil during the campaign against them, but “civil” has more than one meaning. It was not very long before the city fathers had it impressed upon them that Helen and Dee had bought up all the bonds the town had issued to fund its growth, and that the town could not possibly afford to redeem them, especially all at once. The ordnance was immediately repealed. But the ladies’ honor had been besmirched, and they weren’t inclined to simply forgive and forget. So, to appease them, the mountain which sheltered the town from the cold north wind, and the source of much of its wealth, was renamed in their honor.
(Sadly, due to Clinton’s misbegotten renaming policy, I believe it’s now simply listed as H-D Peak.)
There are not one but two places named “Frog Level” in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s long since too small, but I still cherish my “Frog Level Yacht Club” tee shirt.
The Frog Level Yacht Club is associated with the Tazewell County Frog Level.
Y City, AR pop. 4 (5 if the dog is there) at the Y of two highways. Texarkana, AR originally where the Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana borders met. And many more…
Stonewall, CO, is named for the huge stone wall (dike) that runs more or less due north-south on the west side of town. My high school (Tioga) was named after a local Indian chief, as is the local town. There are two other towns with the same name (one north of Dallas and a ghost town in Colorado), but I don’t know where the name of those came from.
Somewhere in the South, I forget where, is the town of 88 cents, because that’s what the store owner had in his pocket when the surveyors came through.
Jonathan
Kentucky. Which fits. 🙂 https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/why-is-eighty-eight-community-in-kentucky-called-so.html
Then you have that huge swatch of New York State with places named, Rome, Utica, Syracuse, Ithaca, etc., because the surveyors tasked with doing the initial plotting of lines in the region happened to be reading the works of Seneca or Cicero at the time….
Next to places like Painted Post, Big Flats, and Horseheads.
And little flats, which disappeared.
Mt. Helen-Dee. The ladies knew their history as well. One of the reasons to revise the Articles of Confederation was to make tax collection easier. In 1785-1793, all the Continental bonds and bills were coming due and payable – including the British counterfeits which were at least as well printed.
A foreign power (pick one) could cause havoc by buying up all of a state’s paper, and call in the debt immediately. What’s backing it? “We’ll simply take land, mineral and fishing rights, etc. in lieu or specie.” Consider Great Britain, France, and Spain buying entire states, breaking up the Confederation. Who’s left to bankroll a war when all the major creditors are aligning against you?