The Danville Mystery

Bet you didn't know the name "Dan" is special. I didn't either. And if any of the roughly 237 Dan's I've met over the course of my life knew it was special, they didn't say so. Which is a mystery unto itself. But that's not the mystery I'm blogging about today.

Ever heard of Danville? Nearly everyone can recall, at least when reminded, the memorable opening line of the song "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band, and later covered by Joan Baez (factoid: this song was the biggest hit of her career):

"Virgil Cain is my name and I drove on the Danville train...."

This was a song about the Civil War and at one time the Virginia town Danville was the headquarters of the Confederacy. The primary north-south train in the eastern United States ran through Danville. But why, I wondered, was the town Danville so named? Well, I learned, because it rests on the banks of the Dan River. OK, then why was the river named Dan? Nobody seems to know for sure.

Turns out that there many states that have Danvilles. They are located in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, California, Georgia and for all I know there may be more of them.

Why are all these communities named after "Dan"? That's the mystery. I challenge anyone to find a good answer. I don't think you will.

Now consider this. How many other communities are named after a male's first name? You won't find any Billvilles, Jeffvilles, Bobvilles, Johnvilles, Stevevilles......I could go on but you get the point. Could it be that the name Dan is the subject of a well-guarded secret, like the Masonic rites or the silly bullshit in that Nicolas Cage movie The National Book of Treasures (here's another mystery---why do they make a sequel out of such a lame movie?).

When traveling in Israel last year, I was shocked to learn that Dan is big stuff in the Holy Land. Imagine my surprise when I found that my travel agent booked me into the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv. It turned out that there's a whole chain of Dan Hotels there. Why? Because the Tribe of Dan was one of the original twelve tribes of the Holy Land. There you go. No mysteries in Israel about the reasons for the prominence of Dan.

But I find no evidence that the mysterious appearance of so many Danville's in the USA is even remotely related to the Tribe of Dan.

All great mysteries have spellbinding endings which neatly resolve the seemingly disconnected threads of the story in an unexpected, intellectually satisfying way. So it should be with The Danville Mystery. Maybe someday I'll write it if I can make any sense of it. For now, I've gotta say, I'm stumped. I guess I'll simply accept my mother's explanation. "Dan's are just plain special."