I think it was back in January when I focused on the little town of Halfway, Oregon. I was pretty impressed when I thought they’d named it that way because of the nearby 45th parallel of latitude north — i.e., halfway between the equator and the North Pole. That turned out to be a false assumption. Nonetheless I still managed to find something interesting in Halfway. Then I tucked away thoughts of other “halfway” places for future exploration.
It didn’t take long to generate several lists of halfway place names. Many nations provide online databases that allowed keyword searching. I’m not going to reprint entire lists but I’ve included links to those resources should you wish to explore the subject further. Repeatedly, I asked myself as I reviewed the tallies, “halfway to what?” It’s not often self-evident. Most of these landmarks are rather small. Additionally, many of the endpoints that determined halfway were obscure when originally designated and have continued to fade even more over time.
Canada
The Canada Geographical Names Data Base (CGNDB) from Natural Resources Canada, a government agency I’ve referenced a number of times, lists 153 Halfway place names including several inhabited but unincorporated areas. There is even a Halfway Mountain in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Halfway shown above falls within the township of Madawaska Valley, Renfrew County, in Ontario. I couldn’t find an exact population but there were barely 4,000 people in the entire Madawaska Valley. It’s tiny.
United Kingdom
The halfway phenomenon seems considerably less pronounced in the United Kingdom. I found only 12 halfways including six inhabited places as I consulted the Gazeteer of British Place Names. There seems to be some logic to that as I think about it. I can imagine nineteenth century Canadian mapmakers struggling to come up with enough names, and resorting to halfways and all sorts of other contrivances just to fill the voids and complete the job. The UK is considerably smaller and they’ve had a lot more time to generate meaningful names. They don’t need halfways.
I’ve chosen a Halfway in Cynghordy, Carmarthenshire, in Wales. It seemed to be the most significant of the UK halfways based on a quick eyeball examination. I don’t have any empirical evidence to back that claim so please correct me if I’m wrong.
Australia
The hunt for halfways then switched to Geoscience Australia where I got 96 matches. The most significant of these seems to be Halfway Creek in New South Wales. It’s not much more than a crossroads on the Pacific Highway where one can stop for fuel and maybe a rest. It does look like an attractive place in Street View, though.
United States
The final stop on our halfway tour takes us to the United States where the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) uncovered 372 instances. One, of course, is Halfway, Oregon which I featured previously. Another is Halfway, Maryland, named for being halfway between the dueling metropolises of Hagerstown (which I’ve heard of) and Williamsport (not the one in Pennsylvania but a much more obscure one in Maryland that I’ve never heard of).
The other decently-sized Halfway, bearing in mind that I’m using this in a relative sense, is Halfway, Missouri. This is distinguishable for being the hometown of David Smith, they guy who shot himself across the Mexico-USA border with a cannon. Did any of you guess where this thread would eventually lead?
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