20 Weird Facts About Towns You Never Knew – Part 2

Uravan, Colorado was a mining town that provided uranium to the Manhattan Project. The town was shut down in 1968. Over the next 20 years, Uravan and its contents were completely demolished to decontaminate the area because of radiation.

The small town of Rabbit Hash in Kentucky has only elected dogs from the area as mayors since 1998.

The town with the longest name in the world is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, in the Northern Island of New Zealand.

The ghost town of Picher, Oklahoma was evacuated in 2009. The town was the center of a massive lead and zinc mining complex. The Army Corps of Engineers declared in 2006 that 86% of the town's structures were so undermined that they were in imminent danger of collapse.

There is a town in New Mexico named "Truth or Consequences". They changed it from "Hot Springs" in 1950 to win a radio contest.

The town of Basking Ridge, New Jersey, was built around a large oak tree in 1717. Legend has it that George Washington and his troops camped under it during the Revolutionary War. The tree was estimated to be 619 years old when it died in 2016.

The town of Zzyzx in California was named by a quack doctor to purposely be the last listing in any dictionary or atlas.

There is a town in Texas called White Settlement. The area was called "white" because it was a settlement of white homesteaders, as opposed to other settlements in the vicinity that were composed of both white and Native American residents.

In 2012, the town of Idyllwild, California elected a golden retriever named Max as the Mayor of the town.

A town named Vulcan in the U.S. applied for Soviet foreign aid to fix a bridge after being denied by the state for 2 years and the state finally agreed to fix the bridge after Soviet journalists showed up.