On drives from the Midwest to locations further east, we often pass a community with an interesting name: SNPJ, Pennsylvania. This is an unusual name. No vowels. An acronym? A misprint? Wikipedia suggests this is an unusual place with just 15 residents:

S.N.P.J. stands for “Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota” (Slovene National Benefit Society), a fraternal society and financial co-operative based in North Fayette, Pennsylvania. The society applied to have their 500-acre (200 ha) recreation center in western Pennsylvania designated as a separate municipality in 1977. The S.N.P.J. borough was created so that the society could, among other things, get its own liquor license. North Beaver Township, the municipality in which the center was originally located, restricted the sale of alcohol on Sundays (blue law)…

It is more of a recreation complex than a community, and has 60 rental cabins, 115 mobile home slots, and an artificial lake. It is open to the public as a summertime resort and facility for bingo, weddings, and dances. Members of the society get a discount on the events.

Wikipedia offers few additional details but there is enough here to hint at an interesting history: a fraternal group for a white ethnic group, efforts to bypass liquor laws, providing recreational opportunities, and very few permanent residents.

This leads to the post for tomorrow: how many communities across the United States have unique histories worth knowing? How many communities are like SNPJ and does it matter if there are just a few or a lot?