"Wild west town names" Topic

Ok so with everyone into the west lately and with the nice crop of figures from Black Scorpion (which I have them all and will buy more soon.) I have started building my own town.
I need to pose two question #1 with out using a real town like Deadwood how about some help with a good name ( like Witch hunters has Witch town)
So far I have just a few buildings from the Cow town set and I just can't stand the decals that say Cow town hotel.
#2 how anal do people get when doing buildings do you just paint the outside and forget the interior or do both. I am sure I go overboard with this. I am doing my sheriffs office now, so I have added the office inside and a wall to separate it from the cell block which I am installing now. I plan on a second loft area bedroom so my Lawman has a place to live. I am adding on to the livery stable because it would not really fit horses in it. So it's getting a loft an office/bunk type area and horse stalls. Do any of you get detailed with the architecture or am I the only one? Thanks :)

Not my area of expertise, but this site might give you some name ideas:

link

CC

a few ideas,

use your last name ie william then just add town, if your town has a railway william rail etc.

Odd names here:

link

CC

Try coming up with some back story for your town. Why was it founded? Who by? This might springboard a couple of ideas for town names. Or you could name it after yourself; Banditville. Or you could name it after your favourite pet; Tiddlestown. Or you could just name it with a word you like saying a lot (preferably not an expletive). I would suggest looking at the names of real places, and you should soon find that there are few rules and that pretty much anything goes.

I just love names like "Cut and Shoot", Texas:

link

CC

Thanks Y'all

Sweetwater
If you dont build the interiors now, you'll regret it later.

I always use Copperbend AZ.

My Town is called 'Rio Diablo'. As for buildings, i make the outsides only… you cant get into them to place figures. Doesnt stop them from getting on the roof to shoot though.

From the under-appreciated movie satire of 1950's serial westerns 'Rhustlers' Rhapsody', the picturesque town of Oakwood Estates.

I heard a football player saying his name and where he was from just before a TV game once.

I've forgotten the players name, but where he was from, has stuck with me all these years. I use the towns' name on my CowTown wild West setting, BUZZARDS'BREATH, AROZONA!

I also built a small town to fit on a 4'X4' table in my favorite gaming and comic book store in Greenville, SC. I built a town entrance like you see on the computer game OUTLAWS, with GW buzzards and a skeleton partly hidden in the sagebrush with the game stores name BORDERLAND painted on the pacquered. Looks very spaghetti westrenish.

Oh I almost forgot all the interior's are either modeled, or floor plans drawn on the inside floors! you can see a portion of my efforts here:

link

As always at your service,

Colonel Hairy Haggis

There was a western movie (McCabe and Mrs Miller?) set in the town of Presbyterian Church.
You might also go with Biblical names, if you do not want to have too much of a cartoony sound to the town,
Very logical names for a Western town could include:
Jerusalem
Salem
Shiloh
Nazareth
Bethlehem
Armageddon
Megiddo
Bethany
Babylon
From St. Paul's journeys, Damascus
Temperance Montana, and Charity Colorado, where neither is practiced.

Remember that Greenland was named to attract settlers, and Iceland to scare them off. So, you might think of both Bitterwaer and Sweetwater.

I have always thought that "End of the Line, Nevada" had a ring to it.

My town is called "Prosperity"

……………….Doug™

Truth or Consequences NM is one of my favorite
I just went into google maps and scanned around and found Protection
Medicine Lodge
Hooker
Two Buttes (funny for the right crowd)
Sugar City
Rocky Ford
Fair Play
Leadville
Baggs
Crouch
Sisters
Bend
Unity
Virgin

My town is known as Perdition's Wake. The idea from the founders was for it to represent a funeral for hell and it's associated lack of morals. Of course that really hasn't happened.

Just reading a western now where one of the characters comments about the sights of London and Paris. The cowboy he's talking to replies that he didn't find much to his liking in Paris but he'd never really liked that part of Texas at all.

Bandit, check out this website of ghost towns of the American West. I'm sure you'll find some interesting ones there:

ghosttowns.com

Good luck, Bandit. And remember, don't turn your back!

;-)

Serenity.

Try here though, an essential reference for naming and designing Old West:

link

Bandit86,
As far as interiors, I go a little overboard with mine but I find that the close quarters of buildings give you a richer gunfight. My town is named Beaverlick after a small cross road in Kentucky. link
The gallery hasn't been updated in some time; summer is a bad time for me to work on Miniature projects. If you are going to consider working up the insides of your buildings I found that the Cow Town Creator book by Knuckle Duster very helpful in setting up a layout.

Wingnut

Bandit86,

Anything with "Gulch" in it would work. ;-)

I'm just starting my western town—Ertl and Arnica, with some other stuff and scratch built thrown in. I wasn't going to do any interiors, beyond just solid black or brown, but (concidentally) I just checked out Wingnut's website yesterday by chance and was blown away by his very cleverly-named "Enos DeMilo Arms Company" interior. Man, that's creative and looks fantastic. But I can't afford the time to do it for every building, so I plan on just doing it for key ones—Saloon, sheriff's office, general store, livery stable, bank and one or two others.

Name them after cowboy actors: "Elam's Squint was a one-horse town, but it was the only place to get a drink on the road from Eastwood to Brennan's Gulch."

Or, for former bits of Mexico, translate places near you into Spanish. I get Castillo Nuevo, Jefe de Puertas and Cuidad del Lavadero (Newcastle, Gateshead, Washington) – though that's in Babel Fish Spanish, rather then the real thing.

"Name them after cowboy actors"

My town is East Clintwood

What an interesting and entertaining thread. Thanks everyone for the innovation and the links!

Yes very interesting indeed.

A bit off topic but if anyone ever gets a chance to visit Bodie near the USMC Mountian Warfare Training Center and Bridgeport California its well worth a trip.

bodie.com

I like all the ironic names like Tranquility, Albion, Prosperity and that sort of thing. Because you know things aren't gonna be quiet once figs are on the board!

I nicked the name of my Old West Town from John Findley's Weird West Series, Tex Arcana The town is called Hangman's Corners. Be sure to stop in for some Red Eye at the Noose and Gibbet Saloon.

My 28mm town is Dryrot Arizona…..

My western town is Rio Muerde, Arizona.

Thanks for all the response and links. Colonel Hairy Higgins your link did not work for some reason. Anyways I was looking at a bunch of sites and I think I came up with a name. I wanted a tough sounding place but with hope. SO welcome to HELLISH WELLS

So far I've perpetrated Chicken Choke Pass and a town called Fat Chance

a town called Fat Chance

Named after John Wayne in Rio Bravo, perhaps?

I called my town Drygulch, after the first saloon built there when the railroad was being built. They had to bridge a nearby dryed up riverbed. Come and have a drink at the Drygulch Saloon.

Arnica, Montana is the name of a bruise salve I had occasion to make use of when I was in the SCA.

Man, is this a topic after my own heart! I'm currently working on the "Adventures on the Outlaw Trail" campaign setting book for Gutshot, and coming up with town names is one of the things that's both fun and difficult.

We will be using some real places in the Southwest (El Paso, Juarez, Pecos, Orogrande, Tucson, Houston, Dallas, etc.) on the map, but we will also be adding fictional places. Some of my favorites (which will all be outlined in the book) include:

- Coyote Gulch
- Beaver Creek
- Rio Gato
- Mustang Junction
- Crowville Flats
- Crazy Horse Canyon
- Wolf Creek Pass
- Buzzard Point
- La Paloma con Amigos

That last one is a pun in Spanish for "The Dove with Friends," which is (of course) opposite of "Lonesome Dove." Just couldn't resist that one!

I find that the name of the town helps set the tone for the adventure. "Shootout at Coyote Gulch" has a nice B-Western sound to it, whereas "Hell Ride to Buzzard Point" sounds a bit more rough n' dangerous.

—————————————-

As for the insides of my buildings… I go both ways on that point. Some of my buildings are quite detailed (I crafted a special interior for my Whitewash City Sheriff's Office (photos here):
link

Yet for my Arnica and Plasticville buildings, I usually keep them bare for generic use. In fact, some of my Plasticville buildings (like the big square white house in the photos on that page) have duct tape holding them to their bases inside the buildings.

By the way, I'm TOTALLY with you on hating the stickers that came with the Cow Town. If you have made any templates for it, let me know. Otherwise I will probably scan my buildings to create new sticker templates in Photoshop. If i do, I'll post them at the Hawgleg Website.

By the way, thanks for getting me in the mood to finish up my ERT Hotel. It's been sitting around half finished for danged near two years now! Guess I need to just sit down and wrap it up this weekend!

Donkey Punch

rocky you dont happen to have i way i could see those do you as that sounds exactly like what i need

thanks
jon

my ERT Hotel

Fun fact: "Ertl" is not a set of initials, but the surname of the company founder. Surprised me, too.

It's probably 'cause I have the Neil Young song stuck in my head but if I don't use the name Powderfinger for a town I think it will end up as a saloon name.

my is Smithtown, after Big Bill Smith…..

I named mine after an American friend, Dave Paddock, so, Paddock City, simple and saves wearing out my aging brain cell! But, I also like fairly odd names – at least to a Brit – so, Bird in Hand, Blue Ball and Intercourse could all get a vote. As its only a game, I hope, go for something personal or amusing is my advice.

Hello.
How about the same as the nearby creek, Damfino?

My town is Wilson Junction (for the Fort Wilson that was there in earlier times and the junction of two trails through the Rockies).

Bob

One of our partners at Gutshot had a job where he worked on processing US income taxes, and they had a database of every registered city and town in the USA (it tied into the zip code info). Whenever he saw a cool town name, he'd send it to me. A few of them will make it into our Gutshot campaign guide. One, in particular, is very cool:

Wolf Creek Pass

We're gonna try to come up with a cool adventure for that one!

Synonym for hell plus geographic feature equals Western town name.

Purgatory Creek
Hades Ridge
Hell Valley
Gehenna Aroyo
etc.

C W McCall wrote a rather good country truckin' talkin' blues called Wolf Creek Pass. Adventure enough for most:

link

Try these
Gobbler's Crossing
Bloody Springs
Beaverlick
Smut Eye
Blue Balls
Goobertown
Yeehaw Junction
Benevolence
Licking
Cumming
Climax
Conception
Beer Bottle Crossing
French Lick
Big Beaver Lick
Knob Lick
Spread Eagle
Aimwell
Hot Coffee
Knockemstiff
Idiotville
Windy Bottom
Ding Dong

Here are some:
ghosttowngallery.com
link
ghosttowns.com

I really like Elam's Squint as I am related to Jack Elam.

Sky

I love Jack Elam. I watched "Once Apon a Time in the West" again last weekend. That scene at the beginning with Jack Elam and the fly is priceless.

Two comments on doing interiors on paper model buildings:
1)Victorian wallpaper: Google it, & you'll get a thousand hits. You can copy the images, paste, resize, crop, copy & paste again until you get a nice big section of repeating wallpaper. link
has some nice patterns for free downloading.

2)print a second copy of all the walls, & cut out the windows & doors. Glue them on the inside over the top of the wallpaper. (so much easier than the real thing, where you have to trim around them!)