ROAD TRIP: A BBM Game

[nova20194]

Vilna, AB

Vilna is a historic village in central Alberta, Canada.

Vilna is located in Smoky Lake County, on highway 28, 150 km northeast of the city of Edmonton. Bonnie Lake Provincial Recreation Area is located 6 km north of the community, on the shores of Bonne Lake.

Vilna was founded in 1907, mostly by central european settlers, and started to develop in 1919, when the railroad reached this area. It was named in 1920, after the city of Vilna (modern Vilnius in Lithuania). The settlement was incorporated as a village on June 13, 1923. In 2006, Vilna had a population of 274.

It claims to be home to the world's largest mushroom: a metal sculpture.

[MaineWriter]

Afton, TX

(NB: Afton, WY has already been played, but there is also an Afton in Texas)

First known as Patton Springs (after a hunter who had camped at the springs) prior to the 1890s, a post office was granted under the name of Beckton (after the first postmaster). The post office soon closed and the community started using the name Cottonwood. When the time came to open a new post office, the name was already in use by another post office and so Patton Springs/Beckton/Cottonwood was in a quandary. Enter citizen and romantic Myra Kelly who suggested the name from the English song "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton." The new post office opened in 1900 when the town was populated by Myna Kelly and nine of her friends. The town was so poor that the grocer (Afton's sole business) operated out of a tent. Other businesses opened and by the time the 20s had arrived people were (perhaps facetiously) calling Afton "Little Fort Worth."

Afton kept an estimated population of 100 for the 1970 and 1990 censuses, but by 2000 there were only 15 people remaining.

A former gas station in Afton:



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[belbbmfan]

Neji, Mexico

[Meryl]

Iowa Colony, TX

From the Brazosport News, the Official Weblog for the Petrochemical Underarm of Texas, March 5, 2005:



Iowa Colony, the tiny farm-oriented burg in the middle of Brazoria County, is gonna be gettin' flush toilets, which should greatly upgrade its reputation in the land where Texas began.

It wasn't that long ago that Iowa Colony was nothing but a speed trap on Texas 288. That got cleaned up about 9 years ago.

Now, word comes from Austin that Iowa Colony Sterling Lakes, Ltd. has filed a petition for creation of Brazoria County Municipal Utility District No. 31 with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. First, speed traps, now the outhouses. A way of life, gone forever.


(XYZ rule applies)

[MaineWriter]

Quail, TX

The first settlers were the Atkinson brothers (W. I. and T. S.), who established their families in dugout homes in1890 and planted cotton.

A post office was established in 1902 and a school, store and cotton gin all began operations in 1904. A telephone wire strung on a barbed wire fence connected Quail with Wellington. In 1910 the Quail Feather was first published. A new school was built in 1927 and the town's population peaked in 1930 with 300 people.

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[Fran]

Lac La Biche, AB

[Meryl]

East Liberty, TX

East Liberty is on State Highway 87 fourteen miles southeast of Center in southeastern Shelby County. The predominantly black community received its name in 1888 when the Rev. Jeff Goodwin organized the East Liberty Baptist Church there.

The church and school community, located in an area populated mainly by landowning black farmers, also periodically had a general store. The first school in the settlement was called Chinquapin for a huge chinquapin tree that grew in the schoolyard.  In 1965 East Liberty had a twelve-room school with sixteen teachers and an enrollment of 337.

[MaineWriter]

Quarry, TX

 It derived its name from its stone quarries, the economic base of its prosperity in the 1890s. By 1884 Quarry was a station on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway.

In 1891 its post office opened with Ananias M. Conover as postmaster.

By 1896 Quarry had grown into a small distribution center with a justice of the peace, a sheriff, a lawyer, two doctors, a hotel, and a Baptist church.

Quarry commerce flourished briefly with cotton processing, the development of quarries, and an influx of railroad employees. Commercial competition from larger Gay Hill, in Washington County, and the decline of stone quarrying in the area resulted in the rapid elimination of the commercial and processing sectors in Quarry. The community's post office was closed in 1905. Later in the twentieth century Quarry had several railroad tie manufacturing factories. In the 1980s ranching was the economic base of this community, in which the population was by then predominantly black.

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[Fran]

Judah, AB

Judah is on Cape Breton Island.  The community was named for Noel F. Judah, railway auditor.

[nova20194]

Judah, AB

Judah is on Cape Breton Island. 

Judah is in Alberta, but Cape Breton Island is in Nova Scotia. 



Hardisty, AB

Hardisty, Alberta, ( 52°40′22″N, 111°18′31″W, Elevation: 625 metres (2,050 feet), is a town (pop 761; 2005) in Flagstaff County in Alberta, Canada. It is located in east-central Alberta, about 110 kilometres (68 mi) from the Saskatchewan border, near the crossroads of Highway 13 and Highway 881, in the Battle River Valley.

In 2006, Hardisty had a population of 760.

The main industries in and around Hardisty are petroleum and farming. There is a large petroleum "tank farm" near Hardisty, which is also a loci of oil pipelines. The oil industry in Hardisty focuses primarily on transport rather than oil processing or collection, and roughly 70% of all North America's oil is moved through Hardisty at some point. Some of the petroleum companies here are, Gibsons, Enbridge, EnCana, and many others.

Paperny Films taped the television show, "The Week The Women Went" in Hardisty in from June 2 to June 9, 2007. It is tentatively set to air on CBC in Canada in January or February of 2008.
The TV show is part documentary, part reality television, that explores what happens when all the women in an ordinary Canadian town disappear for a week and leave the men and children to cope on their own.


(XYZ rule)