July 15, 2022

Maples Abound Too

By roads-rus

There are lots of oak towns in the USA. The oak, however, is not the most popular tree in the USA. Research shows that the most popular tree in the United States is the red maple. The sugar maple ranks #6, just under the Quaking Aspen. How did that happen? There are only about 16 Aspens in the entire world.

There are 8 aspens in Sweden alone. More about that coming up. The sweetgum is the 3rd most popular tree here. Ruth was shocked when I told her that because she hates to sweep up sweetgum balls. Two of the most popular trees on the list are firs, and 2 are pines. There is only one oak in the top 10 because the white oak is a very common tree here. However, there are about 600 kinds of oak trees around the world.

There are only 12 towns with maple in their names, and 11 of them are in the United States. There are towns that include the word maple in several states. The Maple in Canada’s Ontario is very small. There are Maples in Wisconsin, South Carolina , Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arkansas. Four of the towns with “maple” in their names are unincorporated. Most of the towns using the word maple are followed by another word. For example, the Maple in Wisconsin is Maple Bluff, a town with more than 1,000 people living in it. It’s on Lake Mendota in the Madison area and is not too far from the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired building called Monona Terrace that straddles 2 huge lakes. Maple Heights is a suburb of Cleveland in Ohio and is a city of more than 23,000 people.

The champion maple state, however, is Minnesota. In this state are 5 major towns with “maple” in their names, The Minnesota town names are Mapleton, Maplewood, Maple Lake, Maple Grove, and Maple Plain. Maplewood and Maple Grove are suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The largest maple town in Minnesota is Maple Grove with a population of more than 61,000 Minnesotans.

There is a Maplewood in Missouri too. I grew up near Maplewood, MO in the St. Louis area, which has a population of more than 8,000. Maplewood had at one time many fine restaurants and was a middle class ring community with a great community pool.

Hank

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 Friday, July 15th, 2022 at 8:46 pm and posted in Great City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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