Hell Town and the Royal Oak
Near Front Royal, Virginia
Before it was Front Royal, this crossroads had a rougher name. By the seventeen nineties the settlement was widely known as Hell Town, and the reason was thirst. Front Royal sat where wranglers, drovers, and boatmen converged, men who spent hard days herding cattle, driving horses, guiding wagons, and poling flatboats down the Shenandoah.
When the work was done they came into the settlement looking for a drink or several, and the taverns did a booming trade. The rowdiness that followed earned the place its infernal nickname. As for the respectable name that finally stuck, the town was incorporated as Front Royal in seventeen eighty eight, and several colorful theories compete to explain it.
One holds that a great oak tree, the Royal Oak of England, stood in the public square, and that militia drilling there were commanded to, quote, front the Royal Oak. Another says that when local militia stood guard during the American Revolution, a sentry would call out the challenge, quote, front, and the correct password in reply was, quote, royal. A third traces the name to French speakers who called this the front royal, the royal frontier, the royal frontier.
Nobody can prove which story is true, but all of them beat Hell Town.
