Whynot City!!!! WHAT??
Written by Sneh Chaudhry on May 9, 2022
Some towns get unusual names through marketing chutzpah or misplaced enthusiasm or even through bad spelling. But Whynot, North Carolina might be the most relatable story of all: it’s probably the world’s only town named out of sheer boredom.
Whynot is located in the Piedmont Triad region of north-central North Carolina, about eighty miles east of Charlotte. Even though it was once identified as the exact population centre of the Tar Heel State, it’s a small rural community that looks today about the same way it did one hundred fifty years ago, give or take a few cars and power lines. Apart from its eye-catching name in the road atlas, it probably gets most of its visitors today because it sits on the “Pottery Road Scenic Byway,” America’s largest community of ceramic artisans.
Why visit Whynot For the pottery.
Whynot is located in the Piedmont Triad region of north-central North Carolina, about eighty miles east of Charlotte. Even though it was once identified as the exact population centre of the Tar Heel State, it’s a small rural community that looks today about the same way it did one hundred fifty years ago, give or take a few cars and power lines.
Apart from its eye-catching name in the road atlas, it probably gets most of its visitors today because it sits on the “Pottery Road Scenic Byway,” America’s largest community of ceramic artisans.
How to end a boring town meeting.
Whynot was founded in 1860 when a post office was built along with the 129-mile Fayetteville and Western Plank Road that connected Winston-Salem to Fayetteville, then the longest plank road ever built.
A town meeting was held to pick a name for the new community, but residents wouldn’t stop suggesting names. Why not name it this? Why not name it that? Finally, after hours of this, one fed-up farmer (usually named by local historians as Martin Auman) said, “Let’s name it Whynot and let’s go home!” The bored citizenry quickly agreed.
The town was named for a postmaster’s catchphrase.
A similar story to Whynot’s took place about twenty years later in the logging forests of central Minnesota. Postmaster James Hare was having a hard time getting locals to agree on a name for his new post office. Finally, he jotted down a few possibilities on a piece of paper and sent it to the Postmaster General for a final decision, adding his trademark sign-off “Now then!” at the bottom of the page.
Hare nearly died laughing when he got the news from Washington that he was officially the first postmaster of the Nowthen Post Office. Today Nowthen is a town of 4,000 people, often noted for its big August tractor parade, and it still bears the accidental name from its first postmaster’s little joke.
