The first I thought of was Dead Horse, Alaska. Permanent population 25 - 50, I understand.
I really can't recall where I first heard of it though.
I have probably heard of a few other odd ones like this.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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That's where the "definitely just a balloon, don't pay any attention" landed after the Chinese spy balloon was shot down about a year ago.
At least that's the first time I heard of Dead Horse.
Smallest I know of is Lyle, Minnesota (population of 573). The only reason I know that is because I added all of the buildings there to OpenStreetMap - before and after photo on Mastodon.
Smallest settlement I know would be Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Not a city by any stretch.
The next one that comes to mind is Jackson, Jackson Hole, Wyoming where we had an exchange student from 20+ years ago.
I am from the USA but I want to say that for any foreigner who's seen the movie Groundhog Day (or news about the occasion), the answer is Punxutawney.
Filmed in Woodstock, IL.
My childhood is a lie!
A few smaller ones that pop into my head are Boulder, Amarillo, Centralia (does that still count?), Slab city (not sure that counts either), Salem and Providence. Looking it up, the smallest proper city of these is Salem with 44k.
I could also probably name a ton of European city names and there will be small towns in the USA with that name, but that would kind of be cheating.
Which Centralia? The one that inspired Silent Hill? Or the site of the anti-labor massacre?
I was thinking of the one with the cracked roads and the fire burning below. So that's probably the former? Haven't actually heard of the massacre I think.
That is indeed. The massacre happened in Centralia, WA on the other side of the continent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_massacre_(Washington)
And which salem... lol. (I know which you mean, but there are others too. Very few names in the US aren't used many times.)
The witchy one! Funnily enough, when I googled it for the population number, I found that there's also a Salem in my home state of Baden-WΓΌrttemberg in Germany. I had never heard of that one, despite having been within like 15km of it.
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Probably Boring, Oregon. It is twinned with a town near me called Dull
My general geography of the States is alright due to a bunch of American friends and a girlfriend, but definitely not great
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Nevada city, California. Population 3k+. Thanks to my wife's addiction to christmas movies.
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Wayland, Texas. According to wikipedia it had a population of 100 people in the year 2000. AFAIK it's a ghost town now.
I know that town because I once read a "fun fact" about the Wayland Protocol that said its name was chosen for being the name of an actual town, which (supposedly) cannot be copyrighted.
I stopped for gas in London, Texas recently. My wife looked it up, and it had a population of 188 about 20 years ago, and nobody has counted since.
The lady behind the counter at the gas station was ancient. She had a handwritten βno loiteringβ sign on the door that seemed ironic.
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I have zero idea how big any city in the US is beyond "big". I couldn't begin to rank them by size
I'll be honest with ya, no fucking clue which of them is smaller or not.
Hell, Michigan. Uniquely memorable, for some reason.
Paris, Texas. Yeah, from the movie.
Huh. Didn't know that was in a movie.
That is a small town though. If you like corn, oil and wild hogs you would be a good fit down there.
Pflugerville. My mother has lived there for a while. She moved back to Europe when she got pregnant.
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Truth or Consequences, NM
Heard it on a true crime podcast once and obviously I had to look up how it got its name and now it's just stuck.
EDIT: Missed the never travelled to qualifier. I've been to California twice and NYC once. Only heard of Truth or Consequences after my travels.
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While flying to NY for a week, I saw some cities on the airplane map that I remember because it was weird to me that there is a "London" in the USA, or a "Berlin". Apparently, Berlin (New Hampshire) is a city of around 10k inhabitants...
I mainly know big cities and the names of some states.
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In other words: who's played ticket to ride USA?
Rachel, Nevada, because of Area51 and Penn and Tellerβs Bullshit.
Hell is always a good answer.
Ask it the other way, too. What's the smallest European city Americans can name?
Muff, Ireland. They have a fantastic diving club.
It would have been Fucking, Austria. But it finally broke under the pressure and was renamed. I have not dedicated any brain cells to remembering what exactly its new name is, which I guess is the intended effect.
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Does Avdiikva count?
Amalfi, Italy. My great grandpa was born there, though he immigrated with his family to the US pretty young.
Vatican City.
I've likely seen some smaller ones in places like Tom Scott videos, but can't name any offhand.
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Nantucket (pop 14,255 according to Wikipedia) and Los Alamos (13,179)
Uhh, without looking anything up, Nome, Alaska? In the lower 48, maybe Butte, Montana. Oh wait, how big is Roswell?
I know a fair bit. I could probably label most of the states on a map. Canada is very, very close culturally and obviously geographically, and we pay attention to you the way a flea pays attention to dogs.
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For me it's mostly places in the middle of nowhere that popped up on Google Maps because they had the same name as a city this side of the pond that I was looking for. I know there are several tiny Londons, a tiny Prague, and iirc even a tiny Poland
Muldraugh? I guess it has to be somewhat small, it sure feels like it when it's full of zombies
How old is this crowd? No one knows Luckenbach?
Bluff, Utah. Met a bloke online who told a joke off it, which only made sense after searching for "A bland bluff in Utah." Which brought up another town.
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