There's a neighborhood in the town I grew up in, Poplar Bluff Missouri, called Vinegar Hill. It's on a steep hill above the railroad switch yard. My great-grandfather Samuel Snow Crunk worked for a hickory handle maker on Vinegar Hill after he sold the farm on Pike Slough and moved to Poplar Bluff. He made ax handles, shovel handles and other handles made of hickory. I still have his hickory walking stick.
I always liked the name Vinegar Hill.
...Vinegar Hill. This is truly one of the place names, which Stephen Vincent Benet says, "never get fat." Originally it probably referred to a dusty hillside slope near the crossing of highway 53 and Eleventh Street. The name struck the fancy of people and as the population increased the use of the name was extended to include an area of indefinite boundaries between the Missouri Pacific tracks on the east, the present Highway 67 on the west, with South Eleventh Street about in the center. The traveler through the place could not find out where he entered it or where he left it.
