25 Interesting Towns You Should Know About – Part 2

A small town in New York called Lily Dale is the center of the American Spiritualist movement and receives tens of thousands of visitors each year, many of them seeking out the town's many psychics and mediums to communicate with the dead.

2. The town of Bridal Veil in Oregon maintains a functional post office despite not having had any permanent residents for more than three decades. This is because several thousand couples go out of their way each year to mail their wedding invitations from Bridal Veil for the unique postmark.

3. The town Carmel-by-the-Sea in California has no street address. The business and houses are instead named, or have Geographical addresses such as "Monte Verde 4SW of 8th, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA". This translates as the Westside Monte Verde Street four properties south of the 8th Ave.

4. The small town of Walnut Ridge in Arkansas erected a statue to commemorate the 15-minute layover The Beatles took when changing planes at their airport in 1964.

5. There is a town named High Wycombe in the United Kingdom that publicly weighs their Mayor before and after their term to ensure they haven't gained weight at the taxpayers’ expense. If they have gained weight they are publicly booed.

In 2011, the town of Staines changed its name to Staines-upon-Thames to avoid being associated with Sacha Baron Cohen's character Ali G.

7. In the US state of Illinois, there is a town called "Normal". It was named after the "normal school" (teacher-training institution - which has the goal of instilling cultural norms within students) located there. The town's motto is "Everything Is Just as It Seems!"

8. The small town of Orofino, Idaho, where the state's mental hospital is located, has a high school with the “Maniacs” as its mascot.

9. There is a place in a country town in Massachusetts where people have deposited their old hobby horses called “Ponyhenge.”

10. The town of Singapore in Michigan is a ghost town buried beneath the shores of Lake Michigan after complete deforestation removed its protection from the surrounding sand dunes.

In 1967, the small town of Picoaza in Ecuador successfully elected popular foot powder brand Pulvapies as a write-in candidate for Mayor.

12. The Spanish town of Huéscar was technically at war with Denmark from 1809 to 1981 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. The official declaration of war was forgotten until it was discovered by a local historian, followed by the signing of a peace treaty by the mayor and the Danish ambassador.

13. In 2018, the town of Mayo, Florida temporarily changed its name to "Miracle Whip" as an advertising promotion with Kraft.

14. There is a small town named Orania in South Africa established solely for the preservation of Afrikaans and the Afrikaner identity by keeping their language and culture alive.

15. 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.

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

18. 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.

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

20. 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.

22. 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.

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

24. 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.

25. In 1920, the town of Jackson, Wyoming elected an all-female town council by a margin of 2-1 over the men, drawing the most voters the town had ever seen. Known as the "petticoat rulers," the women served for 3 years and did a great deal to clean up the notoriously lawless town.