November 12, 2022

Towns Named Bloomington

By roads-rus

There are 20 Bloomingtons in America. They may or may not be on maps. This is a problem for me. If they are very small, they may not be on a map at all. This may or may not have anything to do with its size. For example, there is a Bloomington in Utah. It is a neighborhood of growing St. George. Two of our neighbors recently moved there. Bloomington is large enough to have a Walmart and a population of more than 10,000 people, but it remains unmapped.

To complicate the issue further, there are towns named Bloomfield, Bloomdale, and Bloomburg out there that are not mapped because they have slightly different names. This leads to complications. There are many Bloomfields that are not recognized. Is that fair? Maybe I should do Towns Named Bloomfield instead.

I did research on towns named Bloomington, and only the 3 largest ones are acknowledged. They are the Bloomingtons in Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota. What about Bloomington, CA? It has a population of almost 24,000 people and is close to San Bernardino. What about Bloomington, NY? It has a population of only 800 people but is on maps of New York just under Kingston. Why doesn’t it count?

The name Bloomington for a town is from the expected source. People in 1818 established the first town named Bloomington. The first one was in a location loaded with blooms apparently, and others noticed this and named their new towns Bloomington too.

The largest Bloomington is in Indiana. It’s a city of more than 80,000 people, and the University of Indiana is located there. One of my favorite old films called Breaking Away was completely filmed there. In its neighbor Illinois there is a town of almost 77,000 people in a town named Bloomington near Urbana south of Chicago. I have been there many times, and the University of Illinois has a substantial campus where Ruth and I have attended many performances. However, the largest Bloomington around is a suburb of Minneapolis, MN with a population of almost 83,000 people. Shouldn’t it count? There is a town named Bloomington in Kansas that is on maps but is very small. It is near the town of Osborne. There is a Bloomington in the state of Kentucky that is not mapped. Why is that?

ALL TOWNS MATTER! A cartographer should give equal attention to small and large towns. For a map to be accurate, especially one in a road atlas, all towns must be noted. Whose to say that size makes one Bloomington more important than another?

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 Saturday, November 12th, 2022 at 10:12 pm and posted in Great City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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