Champaign and Urbana were never a single city. Urbana was founded in 1833; West Urbana sprang up in 1854 and was later incorporated as the new city of Champaign in 1860. As Champaign’s now the larger of the two, the area’s known colloquially as Champaign-Urbana, though they are and always were distinct entities.
Slight hijack
I live in North Carolina, in what is called the Triangle. Everyone outside the area thinks that the name of the place is Raleigh-Durham, spoken as one name like Winston-Salem. I guess it’s because of the airport (Raleigh Durham International). But the two cities are COMPLETELY separate; they don’t share anything but the airport. Yet when people refer to, say, Duke University, they often refer to it as being located in “Raleigh-Durham”. NOT. It’s in Durham, 25 miles away from Raleigh.
Luckily, I live right outside Chapel Hill so I don’t have to deal with it.
Damn, I was gonna say that.
The metropolis that was created in 1898 by consolidating the various municipalities around New York Harbor into today’s 5-borough city was never officially/legally called “the City of Greater New York.” That was a popular designation only. The 5-borough city was always “the City of New York.” I don’t know why the author of the Wiki entry says that it was called Greater New York from 1898 to 1938. I have a copy of the 1898 charter, and it specifically states that the name for the new city will be “the City of New York.”
Merging municipalities has recently been one of the favourite governmental recreations in Ontario, along with renumbering the highways.
The City of Kawartha Lakes was created in 2001 when the province merged all the municipalities in Victoria County (including the Town of Lindsay), and the Victoria County government, into one organisation.
The merger was not popular, and apparently a plebiscite passed to demerge everything. Since municipalities are “creatures of the province” in Canada, and are totally at the control of the provincial government, the city can’t actually do anything about it without enabling legislation from the province, and so far the province has not acted.
A similar merger took place in other places in Ontario.
The Metropolitan Toronto regional government, and the six city governments under it (the old City of Toronto and the surrounding municipalities of East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and York), were forcibly merged into a new City of Toronto.
Likewise, the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and the municipalities of Nepean, Kanata, Gloucester, Rockcliffe Park, Vanier, and Cumberland, plus the rural townships of West Carleton, Osgoode, Rideau, and Goulbourn, under it were merged into a new City of Ottawa.
Similarly, the Regional Municipality of Hamilton and the municipalities of Hamilton, Ancaster, Dundas, Flamborough, Glanbrook, and Stoney Creek were merged to form a new City of Hamilton.
Thanks for all the contributions, everyone.
After investigation, I find that many of the additions suggested above don’t fit my criteria. Specifically, I was looking for merged cities where at least two of the predecessors were incorporated. Fairborn OH, Jim Thorpe PA, and possibly Union City NJ (not sure if a township in New Jersey counts as incorporated) fit the criteria.
Sauk Prairie WI, according to Wikipedia, has not yet managed to merge, although not for lack of trying. Fuquay-Varina, NC had only one incorporated predecessor. Fremont CA and La Cañada Flintridge CA were amalgamations of unincorporated communities. I suspect the same of North Myrtle Beach SC, although I haven’t been able to find out one way or the other. Chesapeake VA is a city-county merger, which I was not asking about.
As best I can tell, Fort Mitchell KY belongs in type 1, since one of it’s predecessors was named Fort Mitchell, not Old Fort Mitchell.
Anyway, thanks again for your contributions.
Yes, and Budapest is mentioned in the OP. To be exact, it’s three municipalities merged into one: Buda, Óbuda, and Pest.
Southern California: The cities of Newhall, Saugus, Valencia, and Canyon Country combined to form Santa Clarita.
In 1980, the Alabama towns of Riverview, Langdale, Shawmut and Fairfax merged into one town named Valley. The name Valley was a natural since everybody referred to that area as “the valley”.
Fort William + Port Arthur= Thunder Bay, ON
This got me curious about a town near Fremont, Union City, California.
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In the 1950s, the towns of Stonewall Park, WV and Norwood, WV combined to become the present-day Stonewood, WV…
I have always heard of it referred to as “Champaign-Urbana,” which makes me wonder why the University of Illinois now uses the designation “Urbana-Champaign.”
That’s Champaign-Urbana. Are you sure they were once merged? I lived there for four years and read a bit of the history. Urbana was the county seat of Champaign county, but the Illinois Central RR ran a mile west of the Urbana and a town originally called West Urbana grew up around the RR depot and eventually organized as the town of Champaign. Nothing was said of their ever having merged.
I was also told that it was not legally possible for them to merge. The reason was that there was an unincorporable cemetary between them and merging without that would have left a hole in the middle while state law forbade the formation of non-simply-connected towns. (I wondered at the time how the law was worded. I still don’t know.)