The Cornville Sisters

The Camp Verde Bugle newspaper has a great story September 22 entitled "A tale of two Cornvilles." Judy Miller actually went to the only other Cornville in America. It's in Maine. Judy wrote an awesome comparison of the two communities, highlighting their similarities. Then she proposed that the two places become "sister cities." Sister Cities are nothing new--practically every Tom, Dick and Harry town has one. But they are rarely between "sisters" of the same name. What a novel and intriguing idea. It certainly has me interested in Cornville, Maine. The two places are 2,817 miles apart, according to Mapquest. It would take 43 hours of non-stop driving to get from one to the other. Cornville, Maine, is truly out in the middle of Nowhere, Maine. Anyway, you can click here to read Judy's excellent article.

Here's an interesting "aside" on Cornville and many other American communities. Judy was kind to the Post Office in her article. The legend I've heard (and repeated for over 25 years) is that when Mr. Coane turned in his application for a Post Office to be named after himself, the Postal official in D.C. in the 1880's looked at it and declared, "This idiot doesn't even know how to spell the word "corn!" So they simply scratched out Coane's name and put in "Corn." Such behavior was common then. In my years of reading history, I've stumbled on many instances of such postal behavior. The latest was this year over in Wyoming. The people there turned in for a Post Office named "Never Sweat" and the postal people threw it out and named it Dubois instead. Senator Dubois was in charge of the subcommittee that oversaw post office appropriations. Arco, Idaho, is another one close to home. The place was known as "Root Hog" and the people turned in for the name "Junction." The postal people threw that out and arbitrarily named the place for a visiting German count Georg von Arco who was visiting Washington at the time. Bannack, Montana is another one nearby. They applied for the name Bannock with an "O" but the postal people decided they didn't know how to spell and changed the "O" to an "A." Bannock with the "O" was correct because the people wanted to name their town after the Bannock Indian Nation. Nope, now way, the postal people once again decided the locals didn't know how to spell!

What's ironic here is that Cornville, Arizona, really once WAS a great cornfield in the prehistoric days. But it only accidentally wound up being named Cornville and not Coaneville.