Galena is an old name for a town, and it can now be a toxic substance. It was a chief ingredient of kohl, an eye makeup, and its chief ingredient is lead. It is a blue-grey substance. Nevertheless, there are still 17 places in America with this name. One of them is a town in northwestern Illinois that I really like and have been to repeatedly. It is a tourist oriented place with many shops that are geared to the tourist trade. Ulysses S. Grant once had a house here, and you can ski in Illinois here if you would like to. I don’t expect it to change its name any time soon.
Because galena is often associated with lead and arsenic, many of the towns with this name were once mining places that have become ghost towns. There are Galenas is Washington State, South Dakota, and Oregon that have ceased to be real towns and fit this description. Many Galenas are no longer on maps. The Galena in Kansas, for example, is still on the map near Joplin, MO and it’s a lively town of 2,700 people that advertises itself as the oldest mining town in the Southwest. The Galena in Arizona, however, has been reduced to a neighborhood of the town of Bisbee. It is merely a mountain in Colorado and nothing more. It is now just a mountain pass in Idaho. Nevertheless, the Galena that was once a viable town in Missouri, my home state, is still south of Springfield and still on maps, but it is a very small place indeed.
The Galenas that are still around, like the towns in Illinois, and the Galenas in Alaska and Indiana are hanging on. There are still 6 places that cling to this name. There is a Galena Park neighborhood in the Houston, Texas, area. It is the largest community with the name Galena and it has more than 10,000 residents. There is a Galena still in Maryland. It’s in Kent County and still is home to more than 500 people.
There are even 2 international Galenas still around, One is in British Columbia, Canada and the other is in Brazil.
Hank
Security Conscious 