I'm here in the Borough of Newburg, Pennsylvania.

But don't let this sign behind me fool you.

As you can see from the sign down below.

Almost everybody around here calls it La Jose, not La Jose.

By the way, it's La Jose.

Now it's called La Jose because in 1887, a guy named George.

Jose.

Or maybe it was George Jose moved here.

Before that, it had been called Herd, named after the people who founded it.

Why?

It's called Newburg, I can't say.

There seems to be no written record that I found that indicates that.

But what I do know is that this is just the first of many weird Pennsylvania place names we'll be covering in today's episode of Noles Explorers, and Explains.

Now we'll head across the state to the Wyoming Valley and the Borough of Moosic, named for the nearby mountains, which were themselves named by the Lenape people for the great herds of moose that once roamed the area further south.

But still in the anthracite region, we have Mahanoy Plain.

This is a small collection of workers houses near the base of the Mahanoy Plain, which was an inclined plane used to move coal between mines in the valley and the breakers up in Frackville.

It operated from 1861 to 1932, and it moved 900 coal cars per day with the most powerful engines in the world at the time.

The incline was named for the Mahanoy Mountain nearby.

Further over, on the edge of the anthracite region, we have probably the most famous, weirdly named Pennsylvania town, and that's Jim Thorpe.

Now, in 1954, this town was renamed Jim Thorpe in honor of the recently deceased Native American athlete from Oklahoma.

No, Jim Thorpe never stepped foot in the town, but his wife agreed to sell his remains to them anyway, and they erected a nice memorial for him.

So this town that renamed themselves after a guy who had nothing to do with the area, must have had a regular name before this, right?

Also, no, they were called Mauch Chunk.

Mauch Chunk comes from the Lenape word for the large mountain across the river from town, Mauch Sunk, meaning Bear Mountain.

Now we'll make a quick stop back in Amish country nearby.

Intercourse and blue ball to the town of Bird in Hand.

This town took its name from an old hotel sign which showed a bird in a hand, referencing the adage that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, so you'd better stop at this end, because it's what's nearby.

The hotel was begun sometime before 1734, and a hotel continues to operate on the site today, although it is in a different building.

Down by Philadelphia, The borough of Marcus Hook is as far southeast as you can go, and Pennsylvania, bordering both new Jersey and Delaware, named Marietta's Hook by the Dutch around 1675, it is thought to refer to a Native American chief who resided on the hook of land.

Due to land infill over the years, there's no hook left there today.

The British officially renamed it Chichester in 1682, but everyone was calling it Marty's Hook.

Despite being mostly an oil refinery, it became the Marcus Hook we know and love today.

Up in the mountains of Cambria County, we find Nanty-Glo, a coal town named for the Welsh phrase for a ravine of coal or Colebrook Nanty-Glo.

There is a coal mining town in Wales with the same name, though it is all one word.

Cambria County is also Welsh in a way.

Cambria is the Latinized form of Kimbro, the Welsh name for itself.

Another coal town, Smock, is located down in Fayette County.

It's not named for a painter's protective outerwear, but rather the name of the family from whom the coal company purchased the land.

Nearby.

We have the coal town of Shoaf, which was named after the Shoaf family, from who Henry Clay Frick bought the land to build the coke ovens.

The Coke works here continue to operate at a profit until 1972, making them among the last beehive ovens to operate in the nation.

The state Department of Environmental Protection forced their closure that year because they could not comply with new emission standards.

Another famously weird Pennsylvania place name is 84 Pennsylvania down in Washington County.

It's probably called this because the post office was begun there in 1884, but it could be because the nearest mile marker on the B, a railroad, was mile 84.

It is most well known for being the birthplace and headquarters of 84 lumber.

Just a few miles away.

We end up in the village of Laboratory.

In the 1890s, a local chemist set up a Laboratory here to practice his craft, and when a post office opened, his lab was apparently the only notable thing about town.

Before this, however, the area was called Pancake and some people still refer to it as such.

The reason it didn't stay a Pancake is because there was already another post office with the name Pancake.

This Pancake was located in Snowshoe Township, which is our next stop across the state.

Snowshoe, both a borough and a township in Clearfield County, comes from an old Native American camp that sat there after it was abandoned.

The story goes.

A party of white hunters was walking through the area and found a pair of snowshoes.

That's all I've got for you today, so stick around for the next installment of weird Pennsylvania place names.