Brief by Central Staff
Place Names – March 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Last month, we ran a short quiz about street names, and inspired a stunning lack of interest.
But to cure any curiosity we didn’t know about, here are the answers:
1) Alder and Copper: Crestone. Streets in one direction are named after trees, and crossing streets are named for metals or minerals. Since there’s no home mail delivery there, we doubt these street names get much use.
2) Teller and Virginia: Gunnison.
3) Teller and Illinois: Salida. These Teller streets, and many other sites in Colorado (like Teller County and the Teller Opera House in Central City), are named after Henry Moore Teller, one of Colorado’s first two senators — Jerome B. Chaffee was the other.
4) Gunnison and Pine: Buena Vista. This looked like the Bjüni intersection that could be most easily confused with one somewhere else.
5) Hemlock and Third: Leadville.
6) Cyanide and Seventh: Cañon City. How many other places can boast of toxic street names?
7) Agate and Zero: Granby. Most places start their numbered streets with First, but Granby has a Zero — no negative numbers, though. Ellsworth Avenue in Denver really should be named Zero Avenue, since that’s how it functions on the metropolitan street grid.
8) Ouray and Antero: Poncha Springs.
9) Fourth and Front: Fairplay. We will note that Sackett Avenue in Salida was known as Front Street until the 1950s, and old newspapers referred to the tenderloin area near the railroad station as “the Front Street Resort District.”
10) Harrison and Pine: Minturn. It sounded like a Leadville intersection, and thus its inclusion here, with the idea of making the quiz a challenge — but we succeeded too well at that.
11) San Juan and Second: Saguache (or Alamosa).
12) San Juan and Second: Alamosa (or Saguache). We suspect the Saguache intersection came first, since it’s an older town, but we’re not sure.
The in-house critics said this quiz was too hard. So, here’s something a little simpler, which will demonstrate how dull our map would be if the state took its Official English law seriously.
We give you an English word or phrase, and a language. You guess what piece of rural Colorado geography we’re talking about.
1) Exit or Gateway (Spanish)
2) Exit or Gateway (French)
3) Pretty View (Spanish)
4) Pretty View (French)
5) Big River (Spanish)
6) Big River (French) (pre-1922 Colorado)
7) Blue-green Place (Ute)
8) Shining Pile (Quechua)
9) Salt Marsh (French)
10) Cottonwoods (Spanish)
11) Rabbits (Spanish)
12) Footpath (Ute), Gentle (Spanish), or Tobacco (unknown, but perhaps Dineh)
13) Married Woman (Hebrew)
14) Stinking Water (Ute)
15) Fly (Spanish)
16) Rodent (Spanish)
17) Breasts of the Earth (An Unspecified Indian Language)
18) Route of the Buffalo (Ute)
19) Spoon (Spanish)
20) Flowery (Latin)