Classifying the Glasgows of the USA

There are 31 features listed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) with the word 'Glasgow' in their name. Of these, one, Renault, Monroe County Illinois, was last recorded as 'Glasgow' in an atlas of 1876. Another, in Cloud County Kansas, has settled on the spelling 'Glasco'. Nine more have qualified names, like 'Glasgow Landing', 'New Glasgow', 'West Glasgow', and so on.

Leaving twenty which actually appear as 'Glasgow' on some map. Two of these, in Black Hawk County Iowa, and Weakley County Tennessee, are listed as 'historical', which means they no longer have any physical presence at all.

Which leaves eighteen.

Places in the USA have a number of classifications. The fifty states (although Virginia and Georgia, among others, call themselves Commonwealths) are first divided into counties (a few states call them something else: Alaska calls them boroughs). Counties are the main unit of local government. Sheriffs, for example, are county officers. None of the Glasgows are counties.

Below the level of counties, things start to get local and real, and therefore quite messy. There are two classifiers commonly relied on: the USGS, and the AAA (American Automobile Association). One subsidiary classification used by the USGS designates that places appear on 'concise' maps, those with details on a scale of 1:24,000 or finer. There are four Glasgows which qualify for this: those in Barren County Kentucky, Valley County Montana, Howard County Missouri, and Jefferson County Iowa.

Aside from that odd classification, the main USGS division is between 'incorporated' and 'unincorporated' places. 'Incorporated' means that the state legislature has formally recognised them and conferred certain powers on them. Incorporated places will have their own mayor and police chief. Most states describe them as 'cities' (Virginia, for one, calls them 'towns'). Seven of the Glasgows are incorporated, those in Barren County Kentucky, Valley County Montana, Howard County Missouri, Rockbridge County Virginia, Kanwha County West Virginia, Scott County Illinois, and Beaver County Pennsylvania.

Some unincorporated places (UICs) have a special status as 'census-designated places' (CDPs) which means they are separate entities in the census analysis and have a lot of statistics available. There is only one Glasgow, in New Castle County Delaware, in this category.

Only one of the places designated to appear on 'concise' maps , the one in Jefferson County Iowa, is neither incorporated or census-designated.

If you're keeping up, we've now got a grand total of nine real Glasgows. But another, Glasgow Montgomery County Pennsylvania, is USGS-designated as an 'Official Common Name within an Incorporated Place'. So that makes ten.

You would expect the AAA to rely entirely on the USGS when annotating its maps. And, almost entirely, so it does. It puts 'Glasgow' beside a dot, but it has two kinds of dots: red ones, signifying the AAA has listed places to stay there, and black ones, where they haven't. The Glasgows in Kentucky and Montana get a red dot, those in Delaware, Missouri, Virginia, West Virginia, Iowa (Jefferson County) and Illinois get a black one. So you can simply buy the AAA Big Book of Maps and go there. But that's only eight dots.

There is a ninth dot, in Pennsylvania, but it's in Cambria County, which we haven't mentioned up till now. I think this is a result of the confusion of finding three Glasgows in one state. The AAA gives it the same population (63) as the USGS gives to Glasgow, Beaver County. The Cambria Glasgow turns out to be in Reade Township (don't ask about townships) and Reade Township has a United Brethern cemetery which is, if you'll pardon the expression, simply full of Glasgows. So it might actually be a farm name.

So, taking both the USGS and the AAA, we can find eleven, leaving just seven: in Jefferson County, Alabama; Butler County Alabama; San Bernadino County California; Thomas County, Georgia; Tuscarawas County Ohio; Columbiana County Ohio; and Coos County Oregon. These are likely to be just as interesting to visit, if harder to research. For example, Jefferson County, as a result of the terrible 'Bond Swap Affair' of 1995, is the most indebted county in the US, with several contractors and officials now in jail. And Glasgow, Coos County Oregon, appears to be just a wayside store, but it has a self-proclaimed mayor (who also claims to hold every office from sheriff to dog catcher and senior pub crawler).