My Favorite Towns!

When I travel, I sometimes encounter towns with the most wonderful names.

Two of these are Yeehaw Junction, Florida and Cut’N Shoot, Texas.

I first encountered Yeehaw Junction when I was on my way to the first Catholic Answers cruise, which was leaving from South Florida. I was tooling down the highway when I happened to find myself in Yeehaw Junction, which is this little . . . junction . . . near Orlando where they have some stores where they sell various and sundries, including postcards with the town name (and pictures of rambunctious cartoon mules on them).

Hope I get to go back there sometime and pick up some postcards!

I encountered Cut’N Shoot when I was on a road trip all over the Southwest last summer. Though I’ve spent a lot of time in Houston (where my mom’s people lived for so long and where all my aunts and uncles still live), but I normally come into the city from a north easterly direction, driving down from the family ranch in Deep East Texas. This summer, though, happenstance took me on a detour to enter Houston from a more northerly direction, and in the process I found myself in Cut’N Shoot.

Gotta love a town with a name like that!

Despite it being in Texas, though, the town’s name doesn’t have anything (directly) to do with knives or guns.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online:

It was apparently named after a 1912 community confrontation that almost led to violence. According to the different versions of the story, the dispute was either over the design of a new steeple for the town’s only church, the issue of who should be allowed to preach there, or conflicting land claims among church members. A small boy at the scene reportedly declared, "I’m going to cut around the corner and shoot through the bushes in a minute!" The boy’s phrase apparently remained in residents’ minds and was eventually adopted as the town’s name.

So, in the best Hee-Haw tradition, let’s salute these two towns for their great countrified names!

ALL: Saaaaaaa-lute!!!

MORE ON YEEHAW JUNCTION.

MORE ON CUT N’ SHOOT.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

21 thoughts on “My Favorite Towns!”

  1. If you are ever in South Carolina don’t miss Possum Kingdom. Unlike the metropolis Possum Kingdom in Texas, the one in SC is much smaller and not an incorporated town. In fact, the boundaries of the SC PK have never been defined. There is a PK fire department, airport (dirt of course) and tanning salon. Isn’t that all one really needs?

  2. Oklahoma has Slapout and Gotebo (pronounced
    GO-TEE-BO with emphasis on first syllable). We have some really weird named towns, but it’s too early in the morning to think of anymore.

  3. You ought to come to Indiana where, in one county (Brown), there are the towns of Gnaw Bone and Bean Blossom.
    There are lots of theories as to how Gnaw Bone got its name. The least colorful but most likely is that it was settled by some folks from Narbonne, France. The folks at the USPS in Indiana at the time probably didn’t know anything ’bout them Frenchmen and their funny-sounding town names.

  4. Of course, when driving through Amish country, you can visit Intercourse, PA. My father often passes through it on his visits to see us. I’ve been begging him to get me a hat or t-shirt that says, “I (heart) Intercourse, PA”. Most of my peers would probably reply, “being a father to five kids, I’ll bet you do!” 😉
    I seem to recall there being one or two other risque town names in that region.

  5. Yeah, I been all those place. [rolleye]
    My Paw Paw lived in one of ’em.
    Been a bunch a’places the song didn’t mention, too.

  6. There’s a little town in South Carolina called, North! And of course don’t forget Due West, SC. Both of these are pretty close to Moonville.

  7. We have weird place names in Canada, too. To wit: St-Louis-de-Ha-Ha, Quebec; Buffalo Jump (either Manitoba or Alberta), and many more. My favourites, however, are in my home province of Newfoundland (the big island just north of Nova Scotia, for the geographically challenged, LOL!). In Newfoundland, you’ll find places like [CENSORED–ja], Joe Batt’s Arm, Pouch Cove (Pronounced “Pooch”), Random Island, Seldom Come By, Come By Chance, Ireland’s Eye — well, you get the picture. OTOH, there are many names indicating Catholic/Irish roots: Trinity Bay, Conception Bay, St. Lawrence, Marystown, Kilbride, St. John’s (named after St. John the Baptist), St. Philip’s, and many others too numerous to mention (meaning I’ve forgotten, LOL!)… I too really enjoyed this pieace and some day hope to visit Popejoy, Iowa and/or Intercourse, PA (near Gettysburg, by any chance?) Y’all have a nice day, now, y’hear!

  8. “Yeah, I been all those place.”
    You’ve shamed me then. I did a lot of road-tripping while I was in Austin and College Station, but my performance has been shameful since I had a daughter. Course, I’m a transplant from Louisiana, so I have to concede by lower station to all native Texans.

  9. Should be “since my wife and I had a daughter.” Didn’t mean to imply I was some kind of mutant, which would no doubt have inspired many jokes about my Louisiana ancestry. 😉

  10. Actually, I was kidding about having been to all those places (hence the eye roll). Have been to a number though, and my Paw Paw did live in Baytown (among other places in the state).
    Also been to a bunch not in the song (e.g., New Dimebox, New Braunfels, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Zavalla, Broaddus, Galveston, Corpus Christi, and bunches of others).

  11. Love your character names *up yonder* – must have been some pretty hard cases back in the ol’ days for names with such depth of meaning and forethought (Grin).
    As most of the names in NZ are Maori names, it would not mean anything to post them here – the only one I can think of in English is Chasers Gulley on the west coast of Northland.
    The Aussies have some pretty funny names tho’ – more like some of yours.
    Jonathan Prejean.
    None of us would EVER cast aspersions on your ancestry, simply because you’re from Louisiana – much.(smiley)

  12. I can’t think of any interesting names in Nebraska. We’re a pretty boring state. The closest I can come is the town of Norfolk, whose natives you can identify because they pronounce it “Nor-fork.” It was named after its location on the north fork of the river, but someone in Washington decided that it must have been a spelling error, and Nor’fork was supposed to be like Norfolk, Virginia.

  13. Ah, Zavalla! My faithful pitstop and shortcut back to Louisiana from Dallas.

  14. There’s a little unincorporated community in Ohio (Ross County, I believe) called Knockemstiff.

  15. Yes there is a place in Ross County, Ohio named Knockemstiff. I am curently living here.

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