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This article was nominated for deletion on 26 January 2020. The result of the discussion was speedy keep.

Populated Place or Railroad Station?

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Hi Mangoe, Thanks for fixing the orientation between Thorne and Hawthorne - I made a dumb mistake and I'm glad you fixed it. I think it is an open question about how to describe Thorne, maybe we can quickly reach consensus. Thorne started out as a railway station, during WW II it was a populated place and now is a railroad junction (or siding). We have citations for the first two, but we don't have a RS for the status today, which is why I did not call Thorne a formerly populated place or a ghost town. The 1945 newspaper article covers the early history reasonably well. The GNIS entry for Thorne says that Thorne is a "Populated Place", see Feature Class Definitions. If Thorne was not a populated place, then GNIS would probably classify it as a Locale or RR Locale, see the Feature Class Definitions. (For example, Rio Vista, Nevada (see GNIS entry for Rio Vista, Nevada) is a "RR Locale". I've asked that it be considered for deletion because of WP:STATION.) Getting back to Thorne, if Thorne is a populated place, then it is notable, see WP:GEOLAND. If it was never a populated place and always a station, then it is possibly not notable. I agree that Thorne is fairly minor, but there is a WP:RS article from 1945 about Thorne. Also, there are two non-RS websites (nvexpeditions and bascojoenv (the latter probably copied data from the former)) that state that about 100 people lived at Thorne during WW II. I was not about to find a reputable source for about 100 people living there, but I can keep looking. Could we say that Thorne was a populated place and now is a railroad junction? Do we have a WP:RS for what the current status of Thorne is? Cxbrx (talk) 05:47, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

GNIS is not good enough: its compilers tended to assume that any name on a map was "populated", and we have been going through a whole series of Arizona locations of late where GNIS says are/were populated where it is obvious nobody ever lived there. It's a reliable source for location, but not as a rule for what type of feature is named.

Aerial views show The foundation of the old station building, and that's pretty much it. There's one what appears to be a barn, and no signs of any other settlement. And there's a lot of trackwork for the munitions dump that surrounds the junction. All evidence is that nobody evber lived here. Mangoe (talk) 14:55, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've found GNIS to be fairly accurate in Nevada, it is good to know that I should be sure to double check the GNIS class. In the case of Thorne, there is a GNIS entry for the Post Office that refers to Gamett and Paher. I checked my copy and indeed, Thorne is listed on page 126. Also, I found tax records from 1909 that stated that there were two saloons. I was not yet able to find support for the notion that about 100 people lived there. I found a somewhat reputable source about when the depot was removed, so I feel more comfortable saying that it is a formerly populated place. Could we change the text to say "formerly populated place, currently a rail junction"? 16:17, 27 January 2020 (UTC)