Texas Town Names That Are Absolutely Hilarious

Ever been on a road trip and cruised through those "blink and you'll miss it" type of towns? We all have, but have you noticed a lot of those towns have hilarious and strange names?

As we were driving to Amarillo from Austin, I kept an eye out for these types of towns. Unfortunately, I didn't see any that really made me laugh. So here I am, determined to find some of those crazy named towns in Texas. Here's a few of my favorites...and a little behind the history of the name.

COOL

You'll find this gem name in Parker County. It's a small town with a population under 200 "Cool" people. Yeah I know, bad dad joke there. Anyways, I couldn't find anything about how Cool got it's name, but we can safely say this town has one of the coolest names around...ok, I'll stop.

BUG TUSSLE

This almost sounds like a cheesy town name in a Hallmark Christmas movie...yet it's a real town in Texas. The legend goes like this. A church picnic was happening and out of nowhere, a swarm of bugs invaded and ran everyone off. That one moment in time inspired this off the wall town name.

DIME BOX

This one is awfully close to another phrase more commonly used to reference marijuana, but what exactly is a dime box? From what I found out, residents in this little town used to pay 10 cents for postal service and just adopted the name Dime Box to reference the cost of getting mail placed in your mailbox. Simple, yet funny sounding.

EARTH

Yes, as in our one and only planet. It goes back to town founder William E. Halsell who found the soil in this little town to be extremely good. Initially he wanted to have it called Good Earth, but the post office decided to shorten it up to just our planet and state. Earth, Texas...2 pretty powerful things right there.

GOODNIGHT

Can you imagine how this conversation goes?
Person 1: "Hey there, where ya from?"
Person 2: "Goodnight"
Person 1: "But it's only 1pm"
Person 2: "Goodnight, Texas"
Person 1: "Uhhh, you're in Arizona"
Person 2: "Oh forget it"

The origin of the name is pretty simple, it was named after a famous cowman. His name? Charles Goodnight.

HAPPY

Hey! This one is right in our backyard! I swear, every time I hear this town mention, Pharrell's "Happy" pops up in my head. Sure, this town may be the happiest in Texas, but the name came from a nearby stream called Happy Draw that was supposedly the place where cowboys went to replenish.

LOCO

On the surface alone, the town name tells me to stay away. I hear the word loco and look for the nearest exit. However, it's not because it's full of crazy people. Locoweed grew pretty prominently in the area, so they shortened it up and just called it Loco. What exactly is locoweed anyway?

TARZAN

I mean clearly Tarzan lived here, right? Unfortunately no, that's not where the name comes from. A settler by the name of Tant Lindsey came up with 14 names for the town and handed them in for consideration. I don't know what else was on that list, but they felt Tarzan was the best one. Officials approved the name and Lindsey found himself a new job as the town postmaster.

There are so many other great names of towns here in Texas, and maybe we'll have to come back and talk about more another time. For now, enjoy these and slide them into your next trivia night.