In its early settlement days, Oniontown was known as Fort Briny, because of its location on Briny Bay. The harbor town’s population comprised of a wide range of people from many different ports. Despite their differences, they all loved eating onions with every meal. Unfortunately onions wouldn’t grow in the town’s salty dirt, so they had to have them shipped in from other locations. The town’s streets would be filled with Onion Johnnies and Jennies selling their freshest onions.

However, on the eve of the town’s inaugural onion festival, a cargo ship carrying an enormous amount of onions sunk in the harbor, filing Briny Bay with tens of thousands of onions. The town was filled with the pungent smell of mushy onions for the rest of the year. Sailors began referring to Fort Briny as Oniontown. They would make jokes like “A sailor needeth only one’s nose to find the dreary docks of Oniontown”.

As the city grew, the nickname stuck, and it became officially known as Oniontown. The Oniontowners embraced their rather embarrassing history, and built the huge statue of Onion Jenny to represent the town’s onion sellers of the past. Now, Onion Jenny smugly greets all incoming sailors with pride and a string of giant onions.