DUTCH
For example: Modesto, CA has an entire Zeeland neighborhood
VOORNE STREET in Sarasota runs parallel to Edam Street and Guilder Street. Sarasota, Florida is a Gulf of Mexico coastal town. It has no Dutch creation history, but residents such as realtor Anne van der Woude or internist Braden VanderWall do. The city has streets named after Holland, Amsterdam and The Hague, but those are names that everyone is familiar with. Edam and Voorne: when an American town hall decides to name such places, you can bet that someone knows more about the Dutch than just wooden shoes and windmills.
Oma Street intersects with Opa Avenue in Caldwell, Idaho. There is an Alkmaar Street there that turns into Volendam Street. No wonder, this is where the Steunenberg brothers used to live, rooted in the Dutch town of Holten, one was governor of Idaho, the other editor of the local newspaper. City architect was one G.W. van Wyengarten, formerly Van Wijngaarden. On the other hand, six hundred miles south, in Modesto, California, there is also a Volendam Street, yet there’s no Dutch architect there.
THEN AGAIN, what Modesto actually does have, are the farms of John Bos and Bryan van Groningen, one growing flower bulbs, the other pumpkins – John’s acres are named Dutch Hollow Farms. Good luck when you want to attempt to avoid Holland in Modesto, population half a million. There is a Schiphol Lane and a Hilversum Lane, a Ridderkerk Circle, a Kampen Street and a Den Helder Drive. There is a complete Zeeland district with streets named after Terneuzen, Cadzand, Hulst, Axel and Middelburg, among others. The Dutch master painters have their own roads, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Bosch, Hals, Mondrian, Van der Goes, Ruisdael, Van Gogh, and Sinterklaas has his own St. Nicholas Drive.
The Veneman family from Gramsbergen in Overijssel settled years ago in Modesto. They produced an array of lawyers and politicians, of whom Jack got the highway that cuts through the city named after him. His daughter Ann was America’s secretary of agriculture for a while. That particular Dutch manure aroma? You can almost smell it, right here in California.
And then there’s Memphis, Tennessee: there’s a Polder Drive there, and an Amstel Cove. Beautiful homes. And these: Ransdorp Drive, Volendam Cove, Deventer Cove. There is a Twiller Cove, named after Willem van Twillert of Bunschoten, and parallel to it are Vondel Cove and Guilder Cove.
IT DOESN’T really much matter where in the US you’re driving: everywhere you come across places with a hidden Dutch background. Jay in Maine, a town named after John Jay, the son of Marie van Cortlandt from Wijk bij Duurstede. The Kykuit estate in Mount Pleasant, built for the Rockefellers from Breskens. The town of Enka in North Carolina, named after the Arnhem Enka factory, which later became Akzo Nobel. In North Carolina, the Enka facility made nylons for Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman-Marcus and Bloomingdale. And Indiana is home to Grant City, named after President Ulysses Grant, who descended from the De Lannooy family from Leiden.
Speaking of presidents, there are fourteen cities, towns, and counties named Van Buren (Buurmalsen), fourteen named Roosevelt (Tholen), nineteen dedicated to Harding (Beusichem), including one on the moon, and 44 named Lincoln (Hoorn). On the Jersey Shore runs a Hardenberg Avenue, named after pastor Jacob Hardenbergh, who founded Rutgers University. And in New York, Georgia and Washington State, people live on an Egmont Road or Avenue. Off the coast of Florida is an island called Egmont Key. Named for an Irish earl, rumor has it, but regardless, he took his name from Egmond aan Zee. And when they built a lighthouse on the island, well, they copied Dutch Egmond’s J.C.J. van Speijk tower.
America is orange, very orange.
