Do any of these give you a clue? Many acres of dead trees. A great uncle's girlfriend.

Six young girls named Helen, Ida, Sadie, Ethel, Grace and Ada. Cutting the deck for low card in a poker game.

It's interesting to explore the hows and whys of unusual names of towns. For instance:

Deadwood was originally called Dead Wood Gulch because the hillsides surrounding the mining camp were covered with dead trees, the remnants of an extensive forest fire sometime before the first miners began prospecting the creeks. Enterprising Chinese who came in with the gold rush found a sideline that allowed them to get in on the gold rush economy. They cut up the dead trees to sell as firewood to busy miners and everyone who kept the miners busy. Dead Wood became the hub of all this activity.

My great uncle John was a talented story teller. At age 10 I loved his tales about the good old days. His story of dating a girl named Aneta particularly impressed me. "She was quite some girl," Uncle John said. Her family moved to a different settlement where others must also have thought Aneta was "some girl" because they named their town for her. Aneta is in eastern North Dakota.

More than 40 years ago I belonged to a Rapid City writers group where one of the members, Ida McNeil, told how an area a few miles west of Rapid City was named. Ida and five other working gals from Pierre came to the same Black Hills cabin every summer to enjoy the slate-slabbed walls, the surrounding beauty of Ponderosa and aspen, and the good trout fishing. By combining the first letters of their names --- Helen, Ida, Sadie, Ethel, Grace and Ada --- they named the choice residential area just off Highway 44 Hisega, although few people know about the six girls who named it.

But my favorite story of naming a town ties in with my favorite card game. Show Low, Arizona is a thriving resort northeast of Phoenix, a retreat from the desert heat that was named by the turn of a card in a poker game.

Marion Clark and Croydon E. Colley were partners who homesteaded land in l870, fencing off 100,000 acres with barbed wire. Some years later the two had a disagreement and decided to dissolve their partnership with a game of cards called Seven Up. They agreed that the winner would buy out the loser.

As the story goes, they played all night until Cooley needed just one point to win. At that moment, Clark reportedly said, "You show low and you win." Cooley cut the deck to a deuce of clubs, winning the game and providing a name for the future town of Show Low.

Many streets that were originally named for cards, like the King of Spades or Queen of Hearts, were changed by religious factions of the town, but Show Low's main street is still called The Deuce of Clubs Avenue. The street name is printed big and bold on long slabs of wood on every block of the street that runs for several miles through the town named by the turn of the lowest card in the deck.

Deadwood ... Aneta ... Hisega ... Show Low ... four places named in an unusual manner, but fitting naturally into the Western scene.