Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a small provincial or rural town.

1899		J. Flynt Tramping with Tramps 175: English Village ... [...] Amer. Tramp Dialect Jerktown.
1931		M.E. Smith God Have Mercy on Me 135: She used to be a needle worker in Scranton, or some jerk town in Pennsylvania.
c.1940		‘Jeanie in “Two Pussies”’ [comic strip] in B. Adelman Tijuana Bibles (1997) 143: I have no one to fuck in this jerk town.
1940		J.H. O’Hara Pal Joey 11: You [...] destroy the only fine decent thing that has happen to me since coming to this jerk town.
1949		J.T. Farrell ‘Slouch’ in Amer. Dream Girl (1950) 103: Why, I can’t even remember the jerk town she came from.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 110/2: Jerk town or jerkwater. A very small town.
1976		W. Morris One Day 45: Winnemucca was no jerk town in some ways.
1978		H. Selby Jr Requiem for a Dream (1987) 250: Alice had split, gone back to her family in some jerk town in Georgia.
1986		Sullivan & Hitchcock Alfred Hitchcock Tales of Terror 155: What could be worth stealing in this jerk town?
1999		W. Straits Kingdom Come 46: He accepted the advice; it was easy for outsiders, especially from LA to forget this was a sleepy jerk town.
2004		E. Baker Ebenezer 66: From ocean to ocean, from Buffalo to Jerk Town, America.