What's in a (road) name? Evaluating the street names in Vernon

By Ron Dupont

Columnist |

Aim Vernon

If you know Highland Lakes, you know it has a complex maze of roads that confuses newcomers, devours unwary visitors, and mystifies delivery drivers.

You also know that about half the roads have names that sound like a Native American alphabet soup. They go from "Abricada" to "Wicopee" and everything in between. This is primarily the western and northern parts of Highland Lakes, many of which were the earliest areas to be laid out. Later areas used other types of names, which is another story for another day.

People have asked me how these roads got their varied, sometimes tongue-twisting Indian names. I have often said (jesting) that maybe back in 1936 the developers, John Seckler and S. Clayton Shepperd (S & S for short) sat down with a bottle of booze, a pencil and paper, a book of place names, and just went wild.

As it turns out, I may not have been so wrong.

The origin of Highland Lakes' road names came into question recently when Mr. Steev Baker, Director of the Kewaskum Public Library in Kewaskum, Wis., sent an email to Township Clerk Lauren Kirkman, who in turn forwarded it to Jack McLaughlin, general manager of the Highland Lakes Country Club.

"Kewaskum" is the name of one of the roads in Highland Lakes, and Mr. Baker wondered how the name of his town happened to get applied to a road so far away in New Jersey. Did somebody here have ties to Wisconsin, maybe? Neither of those folks knew, so they forwarded it to me. Strictly speaking, I don't know either. But here's my thoughts.

Highland Lakes began in 1936 as a summer lake community, and S & S clearly wanted to accentuate the rustic and natural aspects of their planned resort. Another new lake community in Sparta had already been successful with the Native American theme, indeed had chosen one for its name: Lake Mohawk. So I'm guessing they figured giving the roads Indian names was a no-brainer. Today some would frown on it as cultural appropriation. Back then it was just good marketing.

Thus Native American names from places, tribes, and natural features across the U.S. were applied to roads here in Vernon. But how they chose the particular names they did is the real mystery. Early newspaper articles and other histories of Highland Lakes are silent on the topic.

I should note up front that between choosing the names, copying them down, putting the names onto maps, and then duplicate maps, and later road signs, errors crept in. The spelling of some names was either intentionally altered back in the day, or perhaps mistakes were made over the years. Examples of original names and their Highland Lakes versions include Pocantico/Pocantecs, Pawtucket/Pawtuck, and Canadaway/Canadawa.

Some names could have one of two or more sources. Is Pautuck a shortening of "Pawtucket" (R.I.) or an alteration of Pautuck (Long Island)?

It's also clear that S & S were having an inside joke naming at least one road: Opeechee. You would look long and in vain to find that name in any book on Native Americans place names. That's because it was the name of a popular gum at the time (O-Pee-Chee), and also a tongue-in-cheek tribute to one of the people Seckler & Shepperd bought property from, prominent Paterson wine importer and distributor Joe Opici (Seckler was from Paterson, too). The Opici family owned 100 acres around Lake No. 1 and built the original lake there in the 1920s. Opici's partner in these efforts was a friend, Paterson highway contractor Dick Sauerbutt (yes, his real name).

In researching the origins of the remaining road names, I attempted to employ the most advanced and sophisticated research methodologies possible. Failing that, I Googled them. But I got some interesting results.

Only one name, "Wawayanda," is truly local. There are other local names they could have chosen--Papakating, Pochuck, Kittatinny--but didn't. And only one other is local to northern New Jersey: "Pohatcong." Another is, I suspect, an abbreviation of another north Jersey name: "Aquanonk" is likely a shortening of "Acquackanonk," the Lenape name for the area around the Passaic River.

Some are well-known Native American names that have been used in multiple locales--Mohican, Huron, Sagamore--and can almost be considered generic. And Jack McLaughlin notes that at least one road name has vanished: Algonqwin (again, note the odd spelling), which was S & S's original name for Breakneck Road as it passed through Highland Lakes.

Some road names derive from the larger New York-Connecticut-Long Island area: Abricada (Conn.), Acabonack (Long Island), Pautuck (Long Island), and Pocantecs (N.Y.). Only two names come from Pennsylvania: Tamaqua, and Shomokin, which I suspect is an alteration of the original, Shamokin.

The largest number of names come from upstate New York and New England: Acushnet (Mass.), Agawa (Mass.), Alamoosook (Maine), Anawa (Mass.), Annisquam (Mass.), Canadawa (N.Y.), Casco (Maine), Cohocton (N.Y.), Manaticut (Mass.), Monadnock (N.H.), Onteora (N.Y.), Pocasset (Mass.), Shawondassee (Conn.), Squam (N.H.), Wicopee (N.Y.), and Wiscasset (Maine).

Names from the Mid-Atlantic States include Accomac (Va.), Lonaconing (Md.), and Mesongo (Md.). The southeast states and Texas give us Alachua (Fla.), Alaqua (Fla.), Amicalola (Ga.), Kemah (Texas), Ocala (Fla.), and Wabasso (Fla.).

Only three names come from the West Coast: Alturas (Calif.), Cahto (Calif.), and Wenachee (Wash.). One name, Tahama, comes from the southwest, around Monument Valley.

A large group of names comes from the central and upper Midwest: Aniwa (Wis.), Eyota (Minn.), Kewaskum (Wis.), Kewaunee (Wis.), Mahtoa (Minn.), Mondamin (Iowa), Muscoda (Kan.), Muscotah (Kan.), Neosha (Kan.), Oneota (Wis.), Waconia (Minn.), and Winetka (Ill.).

I suspect that one road name, Sanoset, is another misspelling. The only thing close to it I can find is "Samoset." (Remember your Pilgrim history? Samoset was the first friendly Native American they encountered).

Two road names are an utter mystery to me: Sahwa and Manicroat. The only "Sahwa" I can find anywhere is a Saudi Islamic reform movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. I am beyond reasonably certain this is not what S & S where thinking of when they named the road. I wonder: if Opeechee Road was a remembrance of Joe Opici, might Sahwa Road been the same for Dick Sauerbutt (Sauer/Sahwa)? It's a stretch, I know. Manicroat seems related to Croatan, the Natives that lived near Jamestown, Va. But the name itself is a mystery to me.

There's also a curious custom they had of giving different roads nearly identical names. There's Anawa Road and Aniwa Road; there's Muscoda Road and Muscotah Road; there's Oneota Road and Onteora Road; there's Tahama Road and Tamaqua Road; there's two Sanoset roads (probably supposed to be one, originally); and there are three, count 'em, three Alturas Roads (to be fair, Alturas Road, whose three sections run in a straight line through Highland Lakes, was originally one road that predated the community by 50 years, having been built to service the Olean-Bayonne Oil pipeline that passed through the area in the 1880s). Why choose names that could so easily lead to confusion? I. Do. Not. Know. (Unless maybe they really were drunk).

So, do you see a pattern emerging from all this? A unifying methodology? If so, send me an email or letter, because I sure don't. Like I say: a couple of guys picking interesting-sounding Indian names out of a book at random.

And the notion that's exactly what they did--pick names out of a book--is supported by one fact: 15 road names in Highland Lakes, more than 25 percent of the ones we're looking at, begin with "A." Like a hungry shopper who fills up his cart in the first aisle in the grocery store, they went nuts with names under "A," then tapered off. And there was no attempt to space them out: all the names begin with a mere 12 letters of the alphabet. Guys flipping through a book, grabbing a bunch here, a bunch there.

While many of the names are from well-known places, towns, and natural features, a few (like Mesongo) are really, really obscure. An internet search found almost all of these, including the peculiar ones, in one source, which can be found on Google books: "The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States," by Henry Gannett, and published by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1905. It includes all kinds of U.S. place names (not just Native American) and would have been a common reference book back in the 1930s. Found in most any library, I am guessing.

Henry Gannett (1846-1914) was an interesting dude: he was a pioneering geographer who pretty much invented the modern quadrangle map. Anything to do with geography, map-making, topographical surveys, etc., in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s and Henry Gannett had a hand in it. He also was a founder and ultimately president of a little organization you may have heard of: The National Geographic Society (that's Nat Geo to those of you under 40).

Was Gannett's book the one S & S used to give Highland Lakes its Native American road names? Well, there's this: by my count, there are 60 Native American place names used for roads in Highland Lakes. 94 percent of them can be found in Gannett's book. A few can be found almost no place other than Gannett's book.

Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't use some other book of Native American place names, does it? Except for this: in their desire to choose Native American names, a few mistakes were made. In among all kinds of Native American names for roads in Highland Lakes is Alturas Road. "Alturas," however, is not a Native American name--it's a Spanish one, meaning "heights." It would not appear in a book of Native American names only--but it does appear in Gannett's book.

So was Gannett's book the one they used? Most likely it was more than just one--probably a few, mostly common reference books. John Seckler, who was interviewed several times on the early history of the lake community he built, never seems to have talked about how they named the roads. Heck, in my much younger days I knew Mr. Seckler, enough at least to chat about local history. I could have asked him. Did I? Nope.

Any way you reckon it, I still suspect a bottle of booze was involved.

NorthJersey.com : News : Education

February 12, 2016

Last updated: Friday, February 12, 2016, 3:59 PM