Thanks for the mapquest link.
The point of my inquiry was that it would be nice when reading a story on a thread on FR, if the story cites a location more obscure than “Los Angeles” or “Chicago” or “Phoenix” etc. it might be nice to be able to tell where the place is without having to go to Mapquest or someplace else.
Sure, people who live in the Bay area would probably recognize the town name. And people from other parts of California might recognize it as well. Maybe even people from Oregon would be familiar with Morgan Hill for some reason. But there is a whole lot of territory across this country that wouldn’t recognize the location of a suburb of San Jose by its name. While I was guessing it was probably California just by the sheer stupidity of the officials, it would have been nice to have confirmation of that without having to go to another site to research it.
You’re right. I went back and looked at the article, and there were no indications of which state Morgan Hill is in. If, for example, the article had been linked from the San Jose Mercury News, that would have been a helpful hint.
Since I grew up in the South Bay, I was very familiar with the town and its location - I’ve driven through there more times than I care to remember.