Thoreau, New Mexico

Many assume this McKinley County village takes its name from the author of Walden, though the true origin is debated. The settlement began in eighteen eighty-one when a sawmill was built here alongside the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, and the place was originally called Mitchell. After the mill closed in eighteen ninety the community became a trading post for Navajo rugs, crafts, and jewelry, and somewhere in that transition the name Thoreau attached itself, with some saying it honors someone connected to the railroad.

When Highway Sixty-Six was rerouted in nineteen thirty-seven and bypassed the village, trading declined sharply. Today Thoreau sits within the Navajo Nation, and the Navajo name for it translates as Little Prairie Dogs.