Some towns will change their name for the right offer
In 1950 a town in New Mexico renamed itself after a radio quiz show. It's still called that.
Most towns keep the name somebody gave them a century or two ago. A few got an offer, took it, and sent a crew out to change every sign on every road into town. Here are the best ones.
Hot Springs took a dare
In March 1950, Ralph Edwards, host of the NBC radio show Truth or Consequences, made an announcement. For the show's tenth anniversary he'd broadcast from the first town in America willing to rename itself after the program.
Hot Springs, New Mexico, went for it. On March 31, 1950, residents voted 1,294 to 295 to become Truth or Consequences. The show went out live from the newly renamed town the next evening.
The part nobody expected is that Edwards kept coming back. He showed up for the town's fiesta the first weekend of May for the next 50 years. The town still throws the fiesta every May. The Census Bureau puts it at 5,942 people, all of whom have to spell out a 21-character hometown on every form they ever fill out.
Mauch Chunk made a deal with a widow
Jim Thorpe won Olympic gold in the pentathlon and decathlon in 1912 and is still on the short list of the greatest athletes this country has ever produced. When he died in 1953, his widow went looking for a place that would build him a memorial. His home state of Oklahoma said no.
Two struggling Pennsylvania coal towns, Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, said yes. In 1954 they merged, renamed themselves after him, and built the memorial. Thorpe had never been there.
It wasn't the end of the story. Years later his sons and the Sac and Fox Nation went to court to bring his remains home to Oklahoma. A federal judge sided with them in 2013. An appeals court reversed that in 2014, and the Supreme Court declined to take the case in 2015. He's still buried in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
Clark became DISH for ten years of TV
In 2005 the town of Clark, Texas, had about 125 people. EchoStar, which runs the Dish Network satellite service, offered every household ten years of free basic service if the town changed its name to DISH. All capitals, like the logo.
Clark said yes.
The free TV ran out in 2015. The name didn't. There's been talk about changing it back, and it hasn't happened. DISH, Texas is up to an estimated 476 people now, and every one of them lives in a town named after a satellite company whose free service expired a decade ago.
Halfway was Half.com for exactly one year
In late 1999 an internet startup called Half.com, which sold used books and CDs, offered Halfway, Oregon, $110,000 and 20 computers for the school. In exchange the town would call itself Half.com for a year.
In January 2000, Halfway became the first town anywhere to take a dot-com name. It was a proclamation, not a legal change, and when the year was up Halfway went back to being Halfway. Half.com got bought by eBay that same year. The town outlasted the website.
One town never had a choice
Santa Claus, Indiana didn't sell anything. The town had been calling itself Santa Fe. In 1856 it applied for a post office and was told Indiana already had one by that name, so it had to pick something else.
They wanted to keep the Santa, and they landed on Santa Claus. The legend says the decision came on Christmas Eve, when a door blew open and somebody heard sleigh bells. The paperwork says it was the post office.
Every one of these meant new signs
Behind each of these stories is a crew with a truck, pulling down a green sign on a two-lane road and bolting up another one. The old name goes in a scrap pile. The new one goes up and, give it a few years, starts to feel like it was always there.
Ask anybody who grew up in DISH what it's called. They won't even blink.