December 11, 2022

Towns named Petersburg

By roads-rus

There are lots of towns named Petersburg. The largest town with this name is the city in Florida. St. Petersburg was named after Saint Petersburg, Russia. Two men flipped a coin to see who would name this city that was to become large. His name was Peter Demens and he won the toss. It has grown from a few families to a city of 245,000. There are at least 10 substantial Petersburgs left and a number of towns with this name have almost gone out of business, The source of their names is not necessarily the city in Russia that has undergone a name change.

Perhaps the best towns with this name are far apart. There is a place of almost 3,000 people with the name Petersburg in Alaska. It is near the town of Wrangell that Ruth & I visited earlier this year when we took a cruise to Alaska. Petersburg, AL is commonly known as “Little Norway” because it was mostly settled by people of Scandinavian descent even though its population is basically Tlingit. They used the island that Petersburg is on as a fishing camp, and it was named for Peter Buschmann and not the Peter who is famous in Russia and known as The Great. A Romanov, he ruled Russia as Tsar from 1682 until 1721 and died 4 years later. However, my favorite town with this almost name is Petersborg in the US Virgin Islands.

Petersborg is a town of more than 2,000 people like the Petersburgs in Illinois, West Virginia, and Indiana. There are also viable Petersburgs of more than 1,000 people in Michigan and Texas. There is a big town called Peterborough in New Hampshire. It is a town of more than 3,000 not too far from Manchester. There are smaller but lively Petersburgs in New Jersey and New York State.

There are at least 17 more Petersburgs in America, but most of them are unincorporated unlike Petersburg,VA that has a population of 33,458 and is near Richmond. Petersburg, CA is now defunct and has been since 1863. Petersburg. IA is also defunct.

There are a few international Petersburgs. A town with this name exists in Ontario, Canada. There are reportedly 2 Petersburgs in South Africa and one in Sweden of all places. The city in Russia with this name that Ruth and I have been to is a city of 5 million people and is said to be the 4th largest city in Europe. There is pressure now to change the names of towns that had colonial names to new names. Petersburg, South Africa is now, for example, the town of Polokwane.

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 Sunday, December 11th, 2022 at 12:32 am and posted in Great City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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