Wednesday, September 14, 2005

All the Arcolas

This wasn't what I planned to do today, but oh well. I tried out Google's new Blog Search, and I entered "Arcola," hoping to find some other local bloggers. Not much luck with that, mainly because I was swamped with entries from all the other places called Arcola. I knew there was one in Illinois, and I figured there must have been one in Italy or somewhere, because I'd heard that our town was named after some place where Napoleon fought a famous battle. But I had no idea there were so many other places with the same name. Then I got curious and went looking for place name resources, and found the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. It's an amazingly detailed resource: there are a couple of Arcola Creeks, an Arcola Junction, and even an Arcola Drainage Ditch. There are also 16 listings of "inhabited places" called Arcola. But it didn't turn up any "Arcola, MN," which is listed as the location for these impressive railroad bridge photos: "My favourite steel bridge," "Arcola Bridge from below," and "Triangles, triangles..."
Altogether, here are the locations of all the Arcolas I have found:
Italy
Alabama
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
Wyoming
and of course, here in Saskatchewan, Canada.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The High Bridge you're referring to, over the St. Croix River in Minnesota, is one of my favorite places... Only 10 minutes from where I grew up and the site of many midnight visits to look out over the moonlit river valley. Really an awesome span. I'm a little young to be thinking this way, but I think it might be where I'd like my ashes spread from someday.

Next time I'm out there (and it's been too long already) I'll take some pics and post them.

Like your blog by the way.