Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hardscrabble, Delaware


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. ✗ plicit  01:38, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Hardscrabble, Delaware

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This one is a bit of a mess. The only thing I can find that says anything possibly useful about it is this "historical marker" which appears to be the product of the local tombstone carver, and which I cannot locate: the location given is at a gas station, and Street View doesn't show it. In any case I am quite dubious about using it as a source, given a lack of provenance; at any rate, it gets us a store, not a town. The only other written record I could find was an act of the Delaware General Assembly "to change the name of the place called Hardscrabble to Jasper". This was passed in 1863. And then things go to pieces, because it's not clear that anyone now agrees on where Hardscrabble was. All topos agree that it is at the place where the old Hardscrabble Road took a slight bend crossing the road that is now Beaver Dam Branch Road, but at some point perhaps even before WW II, this kink was straightened out and the old kinky section is now called Merrick Road. The gas station mentioned above is on the new section, near the spot where everything used to come together on the west end, and there are other old businesses at the intersection, which appear to have popped up with the new road was put through and another N-S main road was added. If you start at the location where the topos say Hardscrabble was and head north to the new road, though, at the intersection with the latter you will find a large rock with the name "Hardscrabble" affixed to it. What the aerials and GMaps show is a rural area which over the years has become thickly populated with chicken farms and, a little further out, some sand pits, and of course the usual houses strewn more recently along the roads. The topos show a building at the old intersection which could well be the store, but nothing else. Besides a few name drops in books of odd place names and false hits on places in other states, and someone raising dairy cattle in the early 1900s, that is all I have. I just do not think this is a notable place. Mangoe (talk) 00:48, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete: If I'm assuming correctly from the rock, it seems that this non-location location may have been a rural neighborhood or a map annotation from long ago, but that doesn't confer notability per WP:GEOLAND criterion 2. Curbon7 (talk) 01:05, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 01:05, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Delaware-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 01:05, 31 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Well, there's this newspaper opinion piece, but it's so satirical that it probably can't be considered reliable/useful. But This appears to be the piece which is the inspiration for the satire, and it is usable. This is a brief history of the site, and explains why it moves on the topos - state highway department misplaced it on a map, and nobody cared enough to get it corrected. This is about what happened after the second piece linked here, which was a proposed store disagreement.  There's also some lesser-detailed stuff about the Hardscrabble corner being dangerous.

So essentially the story of Hardscrabble seems to be that the Messicks had a store here, fought amongst themselves when they tore it down and started referring to the intersection as Hardscrabble, the name stuck, part of the Messicks tried to build another store in the 1970s, they fought amongst themselves, and it came to naught. Meanwhile, the whole "community" is so nondescript the state highway department couldn't figure out the correct location, but it's also so nondescript that nobody cared. Leaning delete because this seems to have been a named intersection where there used to be a store, and that wouldn't pass GEOLAND and I'm not convinced the short local stories that have been turned up are enough for GNG. Hog Farm Talk 02:03, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Doesn't appear to meet WP:GEOLAND as neither I nor others can find evidence that it was inhabited at any point, and doesn't meet GNG due to lack of significant coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 03:23, 31 July 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.