Direction City > City

Factual Questions
1

What direction cities are significantly bigger than the adjacent or nearby non-direction city they’re named for?

Direction city is one with a direction in its name. East St Louis IL and West New York NJ, for examples. They’re adjecent or at least near a city that has the same name except for the direction.[*] They can be, as in those two examples, across state lines from the non-direction city, but they don’t have to be. Nor do they have to be exactly adjacent. Chicago has three direction cities: North Chicago, West Chicago, and East Chicago, None are adjacent to Chicago but they’re in the Chicago Metro area.

Anyway, I’m looking for places where a direction city has outgrown the city its named for. This seems to be an unusual situation and I’ve only found a few examples:

  • Wendover UT/West Wendover NV
  • Battleford/North Battleford SK
  • York/North York ON (these are no longer indepenent cities, but have been assimilated into the Toronto-Borg)

[*] There are cases where there’s no association between a direction city and a non-direction city in the same state. For example, in Oregon there’s a city of Bend and a city of North Bend. They’re no where near each other, separated by a couple hundred miles and two major mountain ranges. Furthermore, North Bend is significantly farther south than Bend.

2

West Covina has more than double the population of Covina.

3

North Adams, Mass., has more people than adjoining Adams MA.

4

North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

No, you’ve never heard of it.

5

This may not quite exactly qualify, but in the western suburbs of Cleveland, there are municipalities North Olmsted and Olmsted Falls, and an unincorporated Olmsted Township. North has a population of 31,591, Falls a population of 8889, and Township a population of 13,455.

The city without the “North” isn’t called just “Olmsted”, and the locale called “Olmsted” isn’t a city, but either way, the North has a greater population than both combined.

6

Well, except for those people who thoroughly read the OP.

7

How embarrassing. I’d better run and hide in my secret lair in North Regina.

8

I’m guilty of war crimes based on my torturous logic, definition of “nearby”, and selective definitions of cities.

East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa has a population of ~270k within it’s city limits. It’s named after the United Kingdom London which is only ~9k, assuming we’re just talking about the City of London.

I’ll see myself out.

9

East Lyme, CT has almost 8 times the population of Lyme.

10

A dual-directional example: East Northport, NY has more than twice the population of Northport.

11

West Palm Beach, FL is roughly 10 times the size of Palm Beach.

12

West Yellowstone, MT has a bigger permanent population than Yellowstone NP, but that’s a bit of a stretch based on the OP.

13

If you wanna count direction in time, New York has turned out to be significantly more populous than York.

14

North Richland Hills, Texas (63,343 in 2010) has about 8 times the population of the adjacent Richland Hills (7,801).

Those figures are from Wikipedia. I’m a little surprised that Richland Hills is that small.

15

That was the first one that came to mind. For reference their populations are North Adams 13,708 and Adams 8,485. There are several others in Massachusetts.

  • South Hadley (17,514) is bigger than Hadley (5,250)
  • West Boylston (7,669) is bigger than Boylston (4,355)
  • North Brookfield (4,680) and West Brookfield (3,701) are both bigger than Brookfield (3,390)
  • It hadn’t officially happened as of the 2010 census count, but East Longmeadow MA (15,720 as of 2010) has probably overtaken Longmeadow (15,784) in the last ten years. East Longmeadow has had a higher growth rate in recent decades.

I haven’t found any in Northern New England (Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) but the Berwicks are quite close in population, and there have been times in the past when South Berwick was larger than Berwick. As of 2010 they officially stand at Berwick (7,246) and South Berwick (7,220). There is also a North Berwick that is not really in contention at 4,576.

Are we limiting ourselves to compass directions only? Because there is an Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania (82,795) that is much larger than either the nearby borough of Darby (10,687) or Darby Township (9,264).

16

To clarify, the Berwicks are in Maine.

17

And South Bend, while technically south of either, is waaaaay to the east. Like, in another state. In a different region of the continent.

18

In southeastern Wisconsin:

  • Troy has a population of 2,328
  • East Troy, which is adjacent to Troy, has a population of 4,281
19

Since it’s a national park, you have to count its real denizens. You know, wolves, bears, bison, elk, etc. I’m afraid West Yellowstone is outnumbered there.

OK, thanks everyone for all the responses. After posting this thread, I remembered I’d done a small bit of research on this several years ago. However, that research wasn’t very thorough, since you guys found lots of examples I hadn’t found. However, I did find a double example you guys didn’t: East Orange and West Orange, NJ. Both are much bigger than Orange NJ, although South Orange is smaller. Also, North Wilkesboro NC is bigger than Wilkesboro.

As far as Upper (or Lower) Wherever, those are interesting, but not what I’m looking for.

20

Sidetrack (sorry): I’ve heard of Wilkesboro, but I’ve never heard of North Wilkesboro. Wilkesboro is the county seat, which is probably part of the reason, but it’s also the location of a Tyson Foods poultry processing mega-plant and a Lowe’s Home Improvement call center and corporate office. Just slightly less of a sidetrack, the number of workers at those two locations, approximately 2,200 at the Tyson plant and approximately 2,000 at the Lowe’s campus, outnumber the actual residents of the town, approximately 3,500.