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After typing "boston why beantown" into the Yahoo! search box, we were rewarded with several web sites that explained the city's moniker. And yes, it does have to do with Boston Baked Beans. We first visited Boston Online and headed straight to the Boston FAQ section. We quickly found the question we were looking for: "Why is Boston called Beantown?" The site explains that in Colonial days, Boston was part of the triangular trade, in which "slaves in the Caribbean grew sugar cane to be shipped to Boston to be made into rum to be sent to West Africa to buy more slaves to send to the West
Indies." Confusing, isn't it? Because of this trade, the area was chock-full of molasses, and beans baked in the gooey syrup became very popular in Boston, thereby earning the city the nickname "Beantown." We stopped next at the old standby The Straight Dope, where we found a lucid explanation of the city's nickname. They confirmed the molasses theory and cited several other influences -- mercantilism, physics, the Coriolis Effect, slavery, and the good ol' American entrepreneurial spirit -- that helped Boston become "Beantown."
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