A little earlier this summer, we explored the stories behind the name of Carson for the city, valley, river and such in the area. (If you didn't read that post, then spoiler alert: it's all because of Kit Carson.) Because I’m a sucker for that kind of discussion, this post explores another facet of place names. Today, we’re hunting down other Carson nomenclature in other parts of the country and how they relate to our very own little patch here at home. Photo at left: Wikimedia Commons.
First of all, we’re not the only community to claim the name of Carson City. Nope, there’s a Carson City in Michigan, almost in the smack-dab middle of the state. At the last census, it had a population of almost 2,000 people. But here’s the cool thing about CC, MI. It is actually named after OUR Carson City. The town started off with a sawmill and a post office in 1868, and one of the sawmill owners named the post office after the Nevada community where he had lived during the big mining boom a few decades back. Carson City, Michigan, was incorporated as a village in 1887 and then incorporated as a city in 1960.
There’s also a Carson City in Mississippi, but other than the fact that it’s located in Greene County, information about this CC is hard to come by. It’s not an incorporated town or city (Greene County has three of these), but instead is designated as a populated place, one of nearly two dozen such places in the county. And while it’s no Carson City, there is a Fort Carson in Colorado, near Colorado Springs. Surprise, surprise, even though it was established until 1942, it’s still named after the same guy who serves as the namesake for so much of our local geography, good ole Kit Carson. Photo at right: Wikimedia Commons.
Of course, you end up with a bigger haul when you widen the net a bit and consider communities that go just by the straightforward name of Carson without a modifier like Fort or City. In fact, there are more than a dozen communities named Carson in the United States, freckled across Alabama, California, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi (in Jackson County, this one is in addition to the Carson City in Greene County), New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington. The one I run into the most is Carson, California (which is not too surprising, right?). It’s in Los Angeles County in an area where the Carson Estate Company signed oil leases in 1923. In 1968, the people living in the area chose to name the unincorporated city Carson over the alternate choice of Dominguez. The Carson Companies, which is the modern-day incarnation of the Carson Estate Company notes that “both names are those of early pioneers that are significant to the history of the area,” thus tying the name of the city to, yup, you saw it coming, Kit Carson.
The other Carson that is really worth noting here is the one in Iowa. Not for its size, because it is literally little more than a wide spot in the road, but because one of the neighboring communities is named Minden. Minden, Iowa, is even smaller than Minden, Nevada, but it’s kind of neat how we have a Minden near our Carson, and so do they. And while I don’t find any hard information to back this up, I imagine that the Minden out there got its name in much the same way ours did. Minden, Nevada, was named by Heinrich Dangberg Jr. in 1906 after the town of Minden in Germany. I lived for a number of years in the Iowa heartland, and a lot of the communities there also share a history of being founded by immigrants from Germany. The Minden in Iowa is a little older than ours, having gotten its post office in 1875, but I’ll betcha a nickel it’s named after the same European town that ours is. Photo at left: Wikimedia Commons, Jennifer Cooper.
As I wrap up this week’s post, I’d be remiss not to mention the passing of Mayor Bob Crowell. He was a native Nevadan, a Vietnam Veteran and spent decades of his life in public service here in Carson City, a place he called the greatest city in Nevada. And he’ll be missed.
About the Author Keith Rugg
R. Keith Rugg has worked on staff for a number of local publications, including Lake Tahoe Action Magazine, the Tahoe Daily Tribune and the Reno Gazette-Journal.
