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Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people from Bluffton like to read about Bluffton. Not just what’s happening in our Bluffton, but what other Bluffton’s there are and how we stack up.
Last week’s essay here about our discovery of our namesakes in Texas, Minnesota, Canada, Georgia and Arkansas (in addition to Ohio and South Carolina) drew more comments and emails than abnormal. One common thread: everyone likes the news that we’re the biggest Bluffton.
Got a phone call from one reader who’s been to Bluffton, Texas. Born and raised here, he lived in the Lone Star state for several years. Bluffton, Texas, he says, is a pretty (as in attractive) little town. Close to Lake Buchanan, he remembers it being about the size of Kingsland.
But in order to get to Bluffton, Texas, you have to go through another town nearby — Kingsland, Texas, and it’s about the size of Bluffton.
Bizarro World.
More than one personal comment from people we encountered this week: they appreciated the lesson of Bluffton, Alabama. With a peak of 8,000 residents in 1892, it very quickly became a ghost town after it’s only industry went bust. Diversification is a good thing.
An email arrived Monday that referred me to the website for the National Weather Service. Do a search there for Bluffton and you’ll get an even dozen locations, they said, all east of the Rocky Mountains.
Sure enough. The list included those we discovered last week (including the Alabama ghost town) plus ourselves. So we found four new ones: Missouri, Iowa, Florida and Tennessee. And we turned once again to Google Earth to track them down.
Bluffton, Missouri is located in the east central portion of the state and looks to be similar to Travisville. If you’re not familiar with that Wells County metropolis, it’s at the corner of Hoosier Highway and 350-South. If you stand at that intersection, you can see three or four homes, not quite in a cluster that might define a community.
Bluffton, Iowa is about three times bigger, which makes it about half the size of Murray. It’s in the far northeast corner of the state.
And then there’s Bluffton, Florida and Bluffton, Tennessee. Or, should we say, there’s not. Google Earth will zero in on a dot that says “Bluffton,” but in both cases, there’s nothing there, not even a road. The Tennessee dot is practically on the border with North Carolina, somewhere in the Appalachian hills; the Florida phantom city is west of Daytona Beach in what looks like a swamp.
Whew. We’re still No. 1.
by MARK MILLER
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