Some Places Have Odd Names

While moving from one state to the next we see a lot of place names. And most of them we just wonder about their meaning. Now today we were driving through Mississippi and near the city of Meridian we saw the name LOST GAP.

This triggered our curiosity and Bea looked it up on Google. (What did we ever do without GOOGLE?)

Down below is what we found. This was published in a WORDPRESS blog.

We concluded today's trip at after 406 miles at a Walmart in Pell City,AL.

      A History of “the” Lost Gap

November 12, 2022 — 1 Comment

On November 1, 2012, Steve Gillespie, Managing Editor of The Meridian Star, referencing the book Railroads of Meridian by J. Parker Lamb, wrote an article in which he detailed the history behind the name Lost Gap:

Lost Gap (just outside of Meridian, Mississippi) got its name because of a compass failure that occurred during construction of the Southern Railroad line around 1859.

For three days two surveying crews each waited on the other to join up with them to lay out the route. Finally their search parties met up.

Underground iron deposits were blamed for the mix-up, skewing the magnetic compasses, which caused the eastbound crew to veer south, and the westbound crew to veer north. Consequently the route has an unplanned section of track running north and south — a “lost gap” in the original route survey.

The Alabama and Vicksburg Railroad operated the rail line through Lost Gap from 1899-1926. A map from this era from Mississippi Rails shows the strange curve in the rail line at Lost Gap.

WHY ALL THIS SMOKE?


Besides of dealing with strange place names, we noticed that our vision forward got sort of limited. The area around Tuscaloosa (another name with a meaning) was enveloped in a grey stinkin' smoke. Again, we googled it and found that the entire Gulf Coast has wildfires from where the smoke drifted north.

Free dump station along the Interstate

Bridge over the Mississippi