ROAD TRIP: A BBM Game

[nova20194]

Rosemary, AB

Rosemary is a village in southern Alberta. It is located 30 km northwest of the city of Brooks and 14 km north of the Trans-Canada Highway. It is home to one school and several businesses.
In 2006, Rosemary had a population of 388.
The community was named for Rosemary Millicent, wife of the Earl of Dudley.


(XYZ rule)

[MaineWriter]

Juliff, TX

 Prior to the Civil War the area had been part of the Arcola Plantation and was a shipping point for area cotton. It throve until the arrival of the Houston Tap and Brazoria Railroad in 1858. The town was named for early settler John J. Juliff ("Triple J" to his friends).

The town was granted a post office in 1891. It closed in 1908, reopened in 1914, and then closed permanently in 1958.

During the Great Depression several saloons and a dance hall were opened alongside the railroad tracks. The landlord was one Thurman "Doc" Duke.With these unsavory businesses serving as the community's nucleus, things went from bad to worse. Juliff did have a church, but the congregation was outnumbered by drunks, gamblers and prostitutes - with some residents performing combinations of these roles. Needless to say, they weren't often called for jury duty.

According to the Handbook of Texas, around 1934 a local musician was sober enough (or drunk enough) to write a song (supposedly) about Juliff. The lyrics "Diddy Wa Diddy - "ain't no town - ain't no city" don't mention Juliff by name and folklorists say that Diddy Wa Diddy is a reference to a mythical place (like the Big Rock Candy Mountain was to Hobos) where there's abundant food and no work. Other sources attribute the song to Arthur "Blind" Blake, a guitarist from Jacksonville (Florida, not Texas) who recorded at least two versions of the song before disappearing around 1931. Since Blind Blake's recordings are still around, we have to assume that the unnamed musician in Juliff was just one in a long string of people who used the lyric.

In one version of the song, the singer declares "I just found out what Diddy Wa Diddy means" while in another the singer pleads: "Won't somebody tell me what Diddy Wa Diddy means?" The words were also used as a title (Diddy Waw Diddy) by Texas Author/ Journalist Billy Porterfield (who was no stranger to places like old Juliff).

Despite the tenuous link to that well-known song, the town was down to 40 residents by 1940. It reached its high-water mark in the late 40s with about 150 people. By the early 60s, the saloons had all moved to Richmond's notorious Mud Alley or the Wards of Houston. Today only bloodweed and a few scattered houses occupy the area.

Perhaps the old saying about the mythical town is true: "Everybody would live in Diddy Wa Diddy - if only it wasn't so hard to find." And if only Juliff could've collected royalties...it might still be there as a tourist attraction.

[Fran]

Freedom, WY

This border town got its name from the freedom it gave early Mormon polygamists from having to outrun Idaho law.  All they had to do was walk across the street and be in another jurisdiction.  Established in 1879, this is the oldest settlement in Star Valley.

-- UltimateWyoming.com

[Meryl]

Morrisey, WY

(XYZ rule applies)

[MaineWriter]

Big Lump, TX

Big Lump was a lignite coal mining town on the International-Great Northern Railroad.

Big Lump had a post office from 1912 until 1924.

The town's high water mark came around 1914 when nearly 400 Big Lumpites called the place home.

With the demise of the lignite market in the 1920s, Big Lump dissolved.


L

[Fran]

Parkman, WY

[Meryl]

New Blox, Texas

New Blox was built north of an older Jasper County settlement called Ebenezer, as an extension of a Kirby Lumber Company camp at Blox and had a commissary by 1927. As the timber at the older community was cut out, a spur line was built to New Blox, enabling the company to move its buildings to the newer logging camp.

At its peak New Blox had a population of 800. Local residents got their mail from nearby Ferguson from 1928 to 1933. As loggers cut out the area's stands of virgin timber, most residents moved on.  By 1941 only twenty people remained at New Blox, and by the late 1940s population estimates were no longer available. A 1984 county highway map refers to the older Blox as New Blox, and second-growth forests have now reclaimed the original site of New Blox.

[MaineWriter]

(taking advantage of the XYZ rule)

Vealmoor, TX

It is thought that Mrs. Minnie Slaughter Veal is the town's namesake. It is believed that the town started in 1880 when Christopher Columbus Slaughter established a ranch just east of present-day Vealmoor. Life at Vealmoor appears to have been quiet.

The town had a post office by 1926 but no population figures were available. The1947 population figure was a mere 20 people which peaked at 190 in the mid 1960s. The post office had closed by 1980 and the population remained at 179 - a figure that's been used ever since.

L

(I just have to comment: Christoper Columbus Slaughter? Minnie Slaughter Veal? LOL)

[nova20194]

Raymond, AB

Raymond is a town in southern Alberta, Canada. It is located south of Lethbridge on Highway 52. Raymond is best known for its annual rodeo and its large Latter-day Saint population.

Raymond was founded in 1901 by mining magnate and industrialist Jesse Knight. Knight named the town after his son Raymond. On 1 July 1903, Raymond was incorporated as a Town in the Northwest Territories of Canada. On 1 September 1905, Raymond became part of the newly-created Province of Alberta.

In 1902, one year after it was founded, Raymond held an outdoor rodeo and called it a stampede; this was Canada's first organized rodeo event.[2] Since the inaugural event, the Raymond Stampede has been held on 1 July or June 30 every summer.
Raymond is also home to the Raymond Judo Club, the first Judo club in Alberta. The club was formed by Yoshio Katsuta in 1943. It was closed for a brief period until being reopened in 1985 by Glenn Iwaasa.

[Fran]

D'Hanis, TX

Downtown D'Hanis

From The Handbook of Texas Online:

D'HANIS, TEXAS. D'Hanis is on Parkers Creek at the intersection of U.S. Highway 90, Farm roads 1796 and 2200, and the Southern Pacific Railroad, eight miles west of Hondo in western Medina County. The community is sometimes called New D'Hanis to distinguish it from the site of old D'Hanis one mile to the east. The original settlement was the third made by Henri Castro through his agent, Theodore Gentilz. When established in the spring of 1847 by twenty-nine Alsatian families, D'Hanis was the frontier settlement on the Old San Antonio Road. Castro named the village for William D'Hanis, Antwerp manager of his colonization company. Jean Batot and his son Christian were the first settlers to arrive. Town lots and twenty-acre farms were surveyed and deeded to the first colonists.

With building materials in short supply, the early settlers built rough shelters of mesquite pickets and thatch, to be replaced eventually by the distinctive European-style rock homes of the settlement. Catholic services, conducted by priests from Castroville, were held in a small structure built in the middle of the village. The building of nearby Fort Lincoln in 1849 afforded the settlers employment and much-needed protection from Indian raids. By 1850 the settlement comprised twenty dwellings and had a schoolteacher. A post office was established in 1854, and the town became a stage stop on the San Antonio-Rio Grande road. St. Dominic's Church was built in 1869, and for a time in the early 1870s two nuns of the Sisters of Divine Providence taught school in D'Hanis.

In 1881, when the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway built across Medina County, it bypassed old D'Hanis, then the site of two stores, a dance hall, and sulfur-well baths. The new town grew up around the railroad loading depot 1½ miles west. Over the next few years the post office, the businesses, and the citizens moved to the railroad site, which was called New D'Hanis for a time and eventually became D'Hanis. The D'Hanis Brick and Tile Company was founded in 1883 and was still in operation in the 1980s. By 1890 the community contained four general stores, one saloon, and a flour and grist mill, and by 1896 two hotels served the community.

In 1900 the population numbered 266. St. Anthony's School was built in 1908, and Holy Cross Church was completed in 1914. The weekly D'Hanis News began publication in 1908, became the Star some years later, and was discontinued in 1923. A second brick factory, Seco Pressed Brick, opened in 1910, the year the D'Hanis Independent School District was formed. The town's first bank opened in 1916. A Catholic church, Our Lady Queen of Peace, was built in 1924 for the Mexican-Americans of the town. The population was an estimated 270 in 1930, 550 in the mid-1940s, and 500 to 550 from that decade through 1990, when it was 548. The population remained the same in 2000. D'Hanis installed waterworks in 1955, street lights in 1957, and a sewer system in 1973. The town was flooded in 1894, 1919, and 1935, and Holy Cross Church was badly damaged by fire in 1963, though it was rebuilt the following year.