Erlanger, Kentucky

Erlanger, just south of Cincinnati, carries the name of a German-born banker who never actually lived there. When the Southern Railroad laid tracks through northern Kentucky in eighteen seventy-three, the depot was called Greenwood after the railroad's president. But when a post office opened in eighteen eighty-two, the community renamed itself for Baron Frederic Emile D'Erlanger, the financier who headed a land syndicate created to develop the area.

D'Erlanger was an investor and promoter rather than a settler, but he had the clout to make the railroad stop for every passenger train and offered one free year of rail transportation to anyone who would relocate to the new town. The incentive worked. Erlanger grew fast enough to incorporate in eighteen ninety-seven, and today it is a densely developed suburb on the I-Seventy-Five approach to the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky airport.