You do not have to cross the Mississippi or chase the horizon to find the names of America’s most curious places. Some of the strangest, funniest, and most enduring town names in the country sit just beyond the beltway, hiding in plain sight along roads D.C.-area drivers travel every weekend.
Less than three hours from the District, Maryland offers Accident, a mountain town whose name sounds like a warning but lives like a retreat. Tucked into Garrett County near Deep Creek Lake, Accident owes its name not to chaos, but to an 18th-century land dispute, when overlapping surveys left one parcel labeled exactly that. The paperwork faded. The name did not.
“There’s a moment when people slow down just to make sure the sign is real,” said Charles Rouson, a photographer who has spent years documenting roadside America. “That hesitation is the photograph.”…