July 8, 2021

Towns Named Star

By roads-rus

After careful research, I have concluded that there are truly only 2 places named Star in the world. Kind of.

There are several towns that have attached the word city to their star. There are Star Cities in Arkansas, Indiana, and West Virginia, for example. The Star City in Illinois is unincorporated so very small. There are 2 Star Cities that have become ghost towns in Michigan and Nevada. So the largest stand alone Star City is the town of 2,274 people in Arkansas. The Star City in West Virginia is a town of almost 2,000, but it has mostly been absorbed into much larger Morgantown over time. A second source says that Star City, AR’s population is about 1,600. Take your pick.

Here’s where the star game goes. Several towns like Lafayette, IN, Presque Isle, ME, large Lincoln, NB, and Miamisburg, OH call themselves Star Cities but have not officially changed their names. That leaves Roanoke, VA, which has called itself “The Star City of the South” for more than 50 years the only legitimate claimant to a starring name, in my opinion.

There are some Stars supposedly in Russia, but neither the city of Novogorod nor the city called Bryansk has officially changed their name to reflect this. The Russian word for star is zvezda. There are said to be Stars in Morocco, The United Kingdom, Egypt, Belarus, and Belgium too, but there is no way to prove this without learning several languages.

There’s a town called Star Valley in Arizona, a Star Lake in New York, and a Star Valley Ranch in Wyoming. About 5,000 people live under these 3 stars. That leaves only 2 towns with the actual name Star in the world. They are in Idaho and North Carolina, so the largest town named Star is now in the process of becoming a suburb of Boise but is still a separate community, for now. The same goes for the much smaller Star in central North Carolina.

The Stars reportedly in Missouri and Montana have attached the words “union” and “silver” to their names. Both will have to grow much larger to truly become towns named Star. This is unlikely so there are actually not many pure Stars in the world. This surprises me because the firmament is full of stars over towns and you would think that town namers would have acted on this. For some reason, this has not happened.

Hank

The starry photo above is from Pexels Stock Photos

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2021 at 9:48 pm and posted in Town Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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