DISH, TX

DISH is a Denton County town whose name is still a punchline with a paper trail. Landis Clark incorporated the community as Clark in June 2000 and served as its first mayor. In November 2005, the town accepted Dish Network’s offer to rename itself DISH, in exchange for ten years of basic television service and a digital video recorder for each resident. The all-capital spelling is official, not a typo. Ponder Independent School District serves the town, with Ponder High School as the comprehensive high school. It’s a tiny place with one of the strangest municipal origin stories in Texas: a town name created by a marketing deal that became permanent civic history.