Weird Small Towns In Texas You Have To See To Believe

It's not the most attractive moniker, but Cut and Shoot at least has a really interesting origin story. The city was named after a feud that took place over a preacher. 

Back in 1912, the town was split over their opinions about a preacher set to hold a community meeting. Some believed he had spent his time frequenting the saloons and dancing. Eventually, the locals against the preacher took the community house with guns. A child witnessing the fight said, "I'm going to cut around the corner and shoot through the bushes in a minute!"

Somehow, this turn of phrase became the town's name.

The story of Nameless is pretty straightforward. Once it was settled in 1869, the residents of the south-central Texas town submitted several ideas for a name to postal authorities in Washington, DC. They were rejected six times, which prompted the community to write a frustrated response to the authorities. 

"Let the post office be nameless and be damned!" they said. Their wish was granted, and in 1880, the post office was named Nameless.

Ding Dong isn't the most attractive name for a town, but it shows an undeniable sense of humor. Ding Dong was founded by Bert and Zulis Bell in the 1930s. The Bells ran a store, and recruited a painter to paint a sign for them.

He painted two bells, one for each Bell, and as a joke, he labeled them "ding" and "dong." The name stuck.

Jot 'Em Down is an unincorporated small town in Delta County, outside Dallas. Allegedly, the name of the town came from a fictional 1930s-era Arkansas radio store on the "Lum and Abner" show. The tiny town went through a series of names in its quest to find itself, including Mohegan, Muddig Prairie, and Bagley. When a couple of brothers moved to the area and wanted to open a store, they polled the community for a store name, which led to the whole town renaming itself.

Although Jot 'Em Down is reportedly a popular rest stop with passersby, the town itself has only reported a population of 10 since 2000.

It's fittingly unclear where Uncertain, TX, got its name. The town, located on the border of Louisiana and 20 miles south of Arkansas, is a picturesque little spot on the shores of Caddo Lake. Only 94 people live there, but its unique name sparked enough interest for a documentary to be made about three of its residents. 

Premiering in early 2017, the documentary Uncertain makes a connection between the town's mysterious name and a few of its residents. One of the film's directors, Anna Sandilands, spoke to Forbes about Wayne, a convicted felon featured in the doc. She calls a place like Uncertain an "oasis" for the man, a safe space for anybody who made a mistake.

In 2005, the rural community of Clark in northeastern Texas made a deal with a national TV provider that would give the whole town free satellite television. The condition? The residents of the town would have to agree to rename their hometown after their corporate sponsor. DISH, TX, was born.

The change obviously garnered mixed responses for the community. In 2013, the New York Times reported on the name change, and got a funny quote from resident Buddy Kinney: "I wished Jack Daniel’s would have looked us up."