How 6 Major American Cities Got Their Names
First up…
Atlanta, Georgia
Its history begins in 1836, the year the Georgia legislature voted to build a rail line set to run from Chattanooga, Tennessee in the west to Savannah in the east. The route was eventually shortened later that year so it would end in a more centralized location, rather than the state’s eastern coast. A settlement was built around the proposed site in 1837 and given the temporary and rather unimaginative name ‘Terminus,’ since it was the line’s endpoint.
The name was changed several times over the next six or so years, most notably to ‘Thrasherville,’ after John Thrasher, a local leader responsible for funding the construction of much of the town’s early infrastructure, and later ‘Marthasville’ in honor of Governor Wilson Lumpkin's daughter, Martha Lumpkin.
In 1845, the chief engineer of the state-run Georgia Railroad, J. Edgar Thomson, proposed a new name, ‘Atlanta,’ in reference to the line itself: the Western and Atlantic Railroad. It was incorporated as a city under that name in 1847.
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Chicago, Illinois
It comes from the Algonquin (specifically a dialect spoken by the Illinois and Miami tribes) ‘shikaakwa,’ meaning ‘wild onion’ or ‘wild leek,’ in reference to the Allium tricoccum, a pungent plant that was then ubiquitous in the region.
One of the first recorded mentions of the name came from the writings of French explorer Robert de LaSalle, who first visited the area sometime in the late 17th century. In his memoirs, published c. 1679, he wrote:
‘We arrived at the said place called ‘Chicagou’ which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region.’
As is often the case with place names that come from native languages, it was gradually corrupted - primarily by the French - over time, and eventually came to be spelled ‘Chicago.’ It was officially incorporated as a town in 1833, and then as a city in 1837.
Phoenix, Arizona
The area that would later become America’s most populous state capital city was originally inhabited by an industrious, innovative, and enigmatic Mesoamerican tribe whose name has since been lost to history. Sometime between 300 and 1400 AD, they built an extensive network of irrigation canals connected to the Salt River that made it possible to support an agrarian society in what was, then as now, an arid and inhospitable desert. They mysteriously disappeared sometime during the 15th century - potentially because of an unmanageable drought - which led the natives who shared the land to dub them the ‘Hohokam,’ meaning, roughly, ‘those who have gone’ (Merriam-Webster).
In any case, the area remained mostly uninhabited until just a couple years after the American Civil War ended, when former Confederate soldier Jack Swilling - who’d previously moved to Arizona to prospect for gold - passed through the Salt River Valley and came to believe that, if he could manage to restore the old Hohokam canals, the area’s rock-free soil could eventually be turned into fertile farmland. A hopeful Swilling and the company he created the redesign the system founded a farming community around five miles from where the modern city now stands in 1868, first calling it Swilling’s Mill, then Helling Mill, and finally Mill City.
Its modern name was adopted a year later, when one of its early settlers, French-born Cambridge graduate Darrell Duppa, suggested it be called ‘Phoenix,’ to symbolize the new town rising from the ruins of the ancient Hohokam civilization, much like the mythical fire bird that’s reborn from its own ashes.
Detroit, Michigan
It’s simply a literal translation of the French word for ‘strait,’ in reference to the site’s proximity to the narrow waterway that connects Lake Huron and Lake Erie.
Seeing its potential as a fur trading hub, French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac - for whom the carmaker is named - founded what eventually became the city of Detroit along its namesake river on July 24, 1701. He and his party originally called their new settlement ‘Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit’ in honor of Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, the French Minister of Marine and, more importantly, a sponsor of their expedition.
It formally became part of the United States in 1796 via the Jay Treaty, and served as Michigan’s capital from the time it gained statehood in 1837, to 1847 when it was moved west to Lansing.
Seattle, Washington
The city’s original settlers, led by Indiana-born pioneer Arthur Denny, originally arrived by boat on the shore of Puget Sound in what is now western Seattle in November of 1851. After attempts to establish a community near their original landing site failed - mainly because there was no suitable place for a harbor or port - the so-called ‘Denny Party’ packed up and moved across the Sound to what is now Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle.
They named their new, permanent home ‘Duwamps,’ after the Duwamish River, which itself was named for one of the tribes that had called the land home for at least four millennia prior to their arrival. The following year, at the suggestion of one of its founding settlers, David Swinson Maynard, the town was renamed Seattle in honor of Si’hal (or Sielth), the local Duwamish chief who’d been an advocate of peaceful coexistence between his people and the pioneers since their unexpected arrival.
Portland, Oregon
The part of the Willamette Valley in which the city now sits was first explored and charted by the Lewis and Clark expedition c. 1805, but American settlement of the area historically occupied by bands of the Chinook tribe didn’t start until the 1840s, when the Oregon Trail first opened.
The initial legal claim to the land, located just a few miles to the south of what was then the region’s largest settlement, Oregon City, was purchased by William Overton and Asa Lovejoy, a pair of pioneers from Tennessee and Massachusetts, respectively, in 1843. Overton later sold his stake to Maine native Francis Pettygrove, who’d previously worked as a shopkeep in Oregon City. Lovejoy and Pettygrove each had equal claim to the site, which made things tricky when it was time to decide what to call it.
Both guys wanted to name it after their hometowns, which, in Lovejoy’s case was Boston. In Pettygrove’s, Portland. To settle the matter, the pair decided to flip for it. Pettygrove won the toss, and so Portland it was.
The coin, an 1835 copper penny now colloquially called the Portland Penny, has been on display at the Oregon Historical Society’s museum since 1910.
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