U.S. Cities, Towns and Places Trivia Quiz

Answer: New Mexico

Las Cruces, New Mexico is known as "The City of the Crosses" because of its translation from the Spanish "The Crosses". No one is quite certain exactly where the city derived this name. Las Cruces was founded in 1849. Unlike many major cities, it has no clearly defined downtown business district. This is largely due to the fact that in the 1960s, much of the older parts of the city were razed in an effort to modernize the downtown area, with the end result being practically NO downtown at all!

In February 2013, the mayor announced plans for a huge 700 acre city park, which would be nearly as large as New York's Central Park.

Answer: Ulysses S. Grant

Schuyler Colfax was born in New York City, but later moved with his family to New Carlisle, Indiana. He entered politics at an early age and belonged to both the Whig party and later, to the newly-minted Republican party.

Not only is a town in Indiana named after him, but California, North Carolina, Illinois, Washington, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Louisiana also have towns that honor his name.

Answer: Louisiana

A brief run-down on these Louisiana cities and towns follows:

Pierre Part - settled by French Acadians from Canada, some time after 1755.

Bogalusa - the name "Bogalusa" is derived from the Native American Indian name of a creek that flows through the town, Bogue Lusa, meaning "smoky" or "dark" waters.

DeRidder - this town was named for Ella de Ridder, who was the sister-in-law of a Dutch railroad tycoon. Prior to this name, however, it had been known as
Schovall.

Zwolle - located in extreme west-central Louisiana. The first residents of the area were Native American mound-builders; followed by English speaking people who migrated westward from the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. The town was named for a city by the same name in the Netherlands.

Answer: Alaska

The tiny community of Manley Hot Springs, Alaska lies about 160 miles east of Fairbanks, pretty much in the center of the state.

In 1902 a prospector named John Karshner found some hot springs in the area that he decided to homestead. A telegraph station was built there that same year, and it became a trade center of sorts for miners. Called Baker's Hot Springs, it took its original name from nearby Baker's Creek.

A resort was built a few years later, a kind of hotel/restaurant establishment that catered to miners and various adventurers, and the town grew to a population nearing 500, billing itself as "Hot Springs".

In 1913, however, the resort burned down, and that, coupled with miners leaving the area, brought the population down to a mere 29 people.

In 1957, the town once again underwent a name change, this time to Manley Hot Springs, and as if the decrease in population wasn't already drastic enough, in 1984 a man named Michael Silka killed nine people in the area. Silka had spent a short stint in 1981 in the U.S. Army's Fort Wainwright near Fairbanks, but was discharged for committing several major infractions with weapons.

Back home in Hoffman Estates, Illinois he was arrested on more weapons-related charges on a number of occasions. He later fled back to Alaska, where he murdered his victims while he was living off the land as a "mountain man" for about a month-long period.

Police involved in a shootout with him described the scene as reminiscent of the Vietnam War. The 25-year-old was shot five times by law officers and his remains were cremated and buried at the Sitka National Cemetery at his father's request.

No motive was ever determined as to the cause of his killing spree.

Answer: Bu - fert

Settled by the British in 1711, only Charleston is older than the lovely coastal city of Beaufort in South Carolina. Growth began rather slowly, due to complications caused by the Spanish in the south and by Native American resistance to losing their lands. Imagine! The sheer audacity of defending your lands...

At any rate, the British won and Beaufort became a ship-building center; later with the advent of slavery in the colony, it served as a social haven for wealthy planters. (A town by the same name, but pronounced "Bow - furt", is located in North Carolina.)

The breathtakingly beautiful historic district, in which many of the city's original homes and buildings are so well preserved, consists of five major divisions: Downtown, The Point (or the Old Point), The Bluff, The Old Commons, and the Northwest Quadrant.

At the risk of sounding like a travel brochure for Beaufort, I do feel compelled to share some of the enjoyable events that occur annually. The Home Water Festival is held in the middle of July. The Shrimp Festival is celebrated in the first weekend in October. The Beaufort International Film Festival features independent films during the first week of March. A Taste of Beaufort is held on the first Saturday in May, and Historic Beaufort has a Fall Tour of Homes.

(Hey, I'm not from the area; I live much further inland in northwest Georgia, but I can just about hear 'em calling: "Y'all come on down!")

Answer: Van Tassell

That's right: in 2010, Van Tassell had absolutely no residents living below the poverty line. I hear you asking, "Just how is that possible"?

Well, before you get TOO excited and consider a move, look at some additional data. According to the 2010 census, Van Tassell had a population of 15.

Answer: Oyster Bay

Oyster Bay is the name of a town, a hamlet within the town, an inlet (or harbor), AND a lagoon, all located in Nassau County, New York. In all fairness, the lagoon is called South Oyster Bay, but there is also another area (Massapequa, New York) which was once called by the same name.

Yeah, I'm confused. Are you?

Answer: Honolulu, Hawaii

A shipment of rice laden with rats that carried bubonic plague, along with passengers who got ill during the trip from China to Hawaii, all added up to a recipe for disaster. Add to that, anti-Chinese sentiments in the islands, severe overcrowding in Chinatown, and a fire that was calculated to burn only buildings that were contaminated, yet blew out of control, and the "cake" got icing on it.

After WW2, the rebuilt area suffered again; this time falling into a disreputable state as a "red-light" district. The area was again reclaimed during the decades following, with efforts made especially during the period from the 1960s through the 1990s.

Answer: Milford

The Kent County area of Milford, Delaware was settled in 1680 by a man named Henry Bowan. About a hundred years and a bridge later, the Sussex county side was added. This fourth-largest city in the state bills itself as the "Gateway to Southern Delaware".

Answer: Covington County

Hot Coffee, Mississippi isn't really a town. Does the term "wide spot in the road" mean anything to you? Well, that kind of overstates its importance, too. In fact, this roughly 12-mile stretch of nothing in the middle of nowhere is merely a loosely-based sort of community, at best. According to local legend, a man named J.J. Davis operated an inn and sold hot coffee to passersby, way back in the late 1800s. Otherwise, not much more is memorable about this spot. It does, however, occupy the same county as the county seat, Collins.

Collins, Mississippi suffered greatly during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, as most major aid went to larger cities and towns that had been in the hurricane's path; but guess what? Yankees came to the rescue! Yeah, some folks from Duryea, Pennsylvania lent a big-time kind of helping hands. See, they had suffered from similar flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes, back in 1972, and they remembered how if felt to lose so much. These folks decided to find a town similar in size to their own and adopt it after Hurricane Katrina hit landfall. (Neither town's population exceeded 5,000 at that time.) Later, Collins, Mississippi's mayor, V.O. Smith flew to Duryea to personally thank the people of Duryea for their help.

In 2011, Duryea, Pennsylvania again suffered much loss when it encountered devastation caused by both Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. In a shameless plug for people that I don't even know, please offer to help them, too, if you can.