The first I thought of was Dead Horse, Alaska. Permanent population 25 - 50, I understand.

I really can't recall where I first heard of it though.

I have probably heard of a few other odd ones like this.

Smallest I know of is Lyle, Minnesota (population of 573). The only reason I know that is because I added all of the buildings there to OpenStreetMap - before and after photo on Mastodon.

I am from the USA but I want to say that for any foreigner who's seen the movie Groundhog Day (or news about the occasion), the answer is Punxutawney.

Smallest settlement I know would be Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Not a city by any stretch.

The next one that comes to mind is Jackson, Jackson Hole, Wyoming where we had an exchange student from 20+ years ago.

Gary Indiana?

A few smaller ones that pop into my head are Boulder, Amarillo, Centralia (does that still count?), Slab city (not sure that counts either), Salem and Providence. Looking it up, the smallest proper city of these is Salem with 44k.

I could also probably name a ton of European city names and there will be small towns in the USA with that name, but that would kind of be cheating.

Probably Boring, Oregon. It is twinned with a town near me called Dull

My general geography of the States is alright due to a bunch of American friends and a girlfriend, but definitely not great

Nevada city, California. Population 3k+. Thanks to my wife's addiction to christmas movies.

Wayland, Texas. According to wikipedia it had a population of 100 people in the year 2000. AFAIK it's a ghost town now.

I know that town because I once read a "fun fact" about the Wayland Protocol that said its name was chosen for being the name of an actual town, which (supposedly) cannot be copyrighted.

I have zero idea how big any city in the US is beyond "big". I couldn't begin to rank them by size

Hell, Michigan. Uniquely memorable, for some reason.

Paris, Texas. Yeah, from the movie.

I'll be honest with ya, no fucking clue which of them is smaller or not.

Pflugerville. My mother has lived there for a while. She moved back to Europe when she got pregnant.

Hell is always a good answer.

In other words: who's played ticket to ride USA?

Cooter, Missouri

Rachel, Nevada, because of Area51 and Penn and Teller’s Bullshit.

Ask it the other way, too. What's the smallest European city Americans can name?

Truth or Consequences, NM

Heard it on a true crime podcast once and obviously I had to look up how it got its name and now it's just stuck.

EDIT: Missed the never travelled to qualifier. I've been to California twice and NYC once. Only heard of Truth or Consequences after my travels.

Nantucket (pop 14,255 according to Wikipedia) and Los Alamos (13,179)

While flying to NY for a week, I saw some cities on the airplane map that I remember because it was weird to me that there is a "London" in the USA, or a "Berlin". Apparently, Berlin (New Hampshire) is a city of around 10k inhabitants...

I mainly know big cities and the names of some states.

Uhh, without looking anything up, Nome, Alaska? In the lower 48, maybe Butte, Montana. Oh wait, how big is Roswell?

I know a fair bit. I could probably label most of the states on a map. Canada is very, very close culturally and obviously geographically, and we pay attention to you the way a flea pays attention to dogs.

Muldraugh? I guess it has to be somewhat small, it sure feels like it when it's full of zombies

For me it's mostly places in the middle of nowhere that popped up on Google Maps because they had the same name as a city this side of the pond that I was looking for. I know there are several tiny Londons, a tiny Prague, and iirc even a tiny Poland

I visited NYC for less than a week.

Des Moines , Iowa.

For Canada it's probably Sherbrooke or ~~jonvive~~ Jonquière.

Bonus game: name the linking theme and specific things that link those places. Hint: it's not french things.

EDIT: Famous metal bands come from there. Slipknot from Des Moines, Gorguts from Sherbrooke, Voivod from Jonquiere

Saganough, Michigan, for the sono. Not sure how small it is.

Bluff, Utah. Met a bloke online who told a joke off it, which only made sense after searching for "A bland bluff in Utah." Which brought up another town.

Silent Hill