boomtown

noun boom·town \ ˈbüm-ˌtau̇n \

Updated on: 20 Apr 2018

Definition of boomtown

: a town enjoying a business and population boom

See boomtown defined for English-language learners

Recent Examples of boomtown from the Web

See vintage photos from Historic Ashtabula Harbor: Bridge Street was a boomtown, once one of the roughest ports in the world.

— laura johnston, cleveland.com, "Find walleye tournaments, fix the plastic problem or: RocktheLake wrap-up," 12 Apr. 2018
Almost all of America’s top 10 boomtowns are in Florida, according to a recent report from the folks at SmartAsset.com.

— eric titner, USA TODAY, "4 overrated recruiting concepts you need to ditch this year," 10 Mar. 2018
San Francisco is such a boomtown that people are leaving in droves.

— paul overberg, WSJ, "San Francisco Has a People Problem," 22 Mar. 2018
Almost all of America’s top 10 boomtowns are in Florida, according to a recent report from the folks at SmartAsset.com.

— eric titner, USA TODAY, "4 overrated recruiting concepts you need to ditch this year," 10 Mar. 2018
Under the governance of Maynard Jackson, the city’s first African-American mayor, Atlanta was also a boomtown for African-Americans, creatively, socially and economically.

— jenna wortham, New York Times, "Is ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ the Most Radical Show on TV?," 24 Jan. 2018
Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second-largest city, has many hallmarks of a boomtown.

— laura kusisto, WSJ, "The Next Housing Crisis: A Historic Shortage of New Homes," 18 Mar. 2018
The romance and promise of the American West was built, in part, on federal land grants to private corporations that promised to bring boomtowns to places previously otherwise deemed uninhabitable wastelands.

— ingrid burrington, The Atlantic, "New Mexico’s Sad Bet on Space Exploration," 2 Mar. 2018
Historic neighborhoods are being revitalized at breakneck speeds, luring citizens back to streets lined with iconic architecture, much of which dates to the city’s late-19th- and early-20th-century origins as a gold-rush boomtown.

— New York Times, "36 Hours in Johannesburg," 8 Feb. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'boomtown.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.