Mountain Town Name Generator

Mountain towns are named by the terrain that shaped them, which is why so many end in pass, gap, notch, hollow, creek, falls, ridge or summit. A gap is a low point in an Appalachian ridge, a notch is the same thing in New England, and a pass is the western or Alpine word. Hollows (pronounced 'holler' in the Smokies) are the narrow valleys where settlers actually built, while basins, parks and meadows mark the open high ground.

The other great source is whatever drew people up there. Western towns kept their mining-camp names: Leadville, Silverton, Cripple Creek, Tincup, Placer Hollow. Resort towns came later and favor soft evergreen imagery such as Pinecrest, Aspen Ridge and Snowmass. Appalachian settlements are blunt and funny (Frog Level, Lick Skillet, Possum Trot), Alpine villages carry German, French and Romansh forms (Grindelwald, Val d'Isère, Sils Maria), and Himalayan hill stations mix local words with colonial-era spellings like Darjeeling and Mussoorie.

The list below mixes invented towns in each of those registers with real mountain towns from the Rockies, Appalachians, Sierra, Alps, Tatras, Caucasus, Himalaya, Andes and Southern Alps, so you can match the exact flavor you need for a ski resort, a frontier camp or a fantasy highland village.