The expression “Flat as a Pancake” obviously means something considered extremely flat. There are several U.S. states, led by Florida, that are indeed even flatter than a pancake. That’s not what this article is about. Rather I found a location that may or may not have been flatter than a pancake. Nonetheless it should be flatter if its name did it justice. The Geographic Names Information System identified it as Pancake Flats.
I expected to find virtually nothing about this highly obscure spot northwest of Altoona, Pennsylvania that wasn’t even significant enough to be identified on online maps (for example). Yet, people have been there. Lots of them. It was one of the signature features, albeit a relatively flat feature set amongst much rougher terrain. It sits along the Greensprings Trail at Wopsononock (Wopsy) Mountain. The Bureau of Land Management described the trail as a “2.2 mile loop. Mainly level, low difficulty.”
GNIS listed only a single Pancake Flats. However, there were 48 other entries for various other Pancakes in the United States.
Towns
I found very little information about populated places named Pancake. Locations in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas did manage to stand out from the crowd a bit.
West Virginia
Pancake, West Virginia (map) consisted of little more than an abandoned whistle stop along the South Branch Valley Railroad named for the Pancake family. Oddly, nearly everyone bearing the Pancake surname listed in Wikipedia came from West Virginia. So the surname clearly signified something significant along the South Branch of the Potomac River.
Pennsylvania
Pancake, Pennsylvania (map) was a bit more notable. It earned its name in the early 1800’s. I even found a Pancake History [no longer available online]. It included an excerpt from the Saturday, April 2, 1955 edition of The Washington Reporter, of Washington, Pennsylvania.
“An air of mystery hovers around the name of George Pancake, one of the early settlers at the little village of that name just east of Washington. Where he came from, when and what became of him are questions that will probably never be answered. He was here for 12 years, and then drifted on west to Ohio… In spite of all efforts to change, the name of Pancake has clung to this village through more than 135 years. First it was Williamsburg, then Martinsburg, and finally Laboratory after Dr. Byron Clark secured a post office for his patent medicine mail order business. But, everyone called it Pancake, and Pancake it still is because it struck the popular fancy as the name of America’s most popular breakfast dish.”
Unfortunately, visitors cannot buy pancakes in Pancake, Pennsylvania.
Texas
Pancake, Texas (map) didn’t exactly qualify as a booming metropolis either. It was large enough nonetheless, to gain an entry in Texas Online from the Texas State Historical Association.
“Pancake is at the intersection of Farm roads 2955 and 217, thirteen miles northwest of Gatesville in northern Coryell County. A post office opened there in 1884 with John R. Pancake as postmaster… The population of Pancake was reported as twenty-five from the 1930s through the 1960s. No further estimates were available until 2000 when the population was eleven.”
Interestingly, anytime I uncovered the origins of a town called Pancake it tied back to someone named Pancake. I attempted to find out where the name came from with mixed results. Ancestry.com said it was German: “Translation of German Pfannkuch(e), North German Pannkoke, Pankauke, or Dutch Pannekoek(e), metonymic occupational names for someone who made and sold pancakes”. One of those family crest websites — and yes apparently there was a Pancake family crest — identified it as Cornish.
Geographic Features
On the other hand, geographic features named pancake seemed to derive from their appearance. They resembled either a single pancake (i.e., very flat and round) or a stack of pancakes. Pancake Flats was a good example of that principal. Likewise, I found a couple of others that seemed to qualify.
Pancake Range
An entire set of mountains stretching 90 miles (140 kilometres) in the central part of Nevada referenced pancakes: the Pancake Range. That was probably the largest geographic pancake feature anywhere. U.S. Route 50, a stretch once dubbed the loneliest road in America, crossed directly over the range. It traveled across Pancake Summit (map) at an elevation of 6,521 feet (1,988 metres).
Pancake Bay
There were pancakes in Canada too! I found a nice one in Ontario called Pancake Bay (map). There was even a Provincial Park located on the bay. It included “3 km of beautiful sand beach and Caribbean blue water.”
Now I’m hungry.
Leave a Reply