Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a small, insignificant town.

1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 331: Week stands in them tank towns in the Pennsylvany oil district is sumpin’ dretful!
1912		Ade Knocking the Neighbors 72: She couldn’t find any one in the neighborhood of 42nd Street who had even heard of the Tank Town in which her Folks were so Prominent.
1915		S. Ford Shorty McCabe on the Job 37: I don’t even look up this tank station on the map.
1915		O.O. McIntyre Day By Day in New York 11 May [synd. col.] New York likes to nurse the hoity-toity idea that plays built especially for local consumption fall flat when they play the ‘tanks’ meaning Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston.
1920		O.O. McIntyre Bits of New York Life 13 Dec. [synd. col.] Theatrical troupers on the first step of adventure in what they call the ‘tanks.’.
1923		Casper State Trib. (WY) 20 July 6/2: Casper is nopt a tank town. [...] Casper is the great metropolis of the state.
1929		W.R. Burnett Little Caesar (1932) 249: Rico’s tired of this tank town.
1931		R.E. Howard ‘Circus Fists’ in Fight Stories Dec. 🌐 However small a tank-town might be, it generally had at least one huge roughneck with a reputation of some kind.
1936		Mencken Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: In the old days a small town used to be a tank or a jerkwater, but now it is a filling-station.
1937		F.Gruber ‘Death on Eagle’s Crag’ in Goulart (1967) 184: Maybe they’re not up yet over at that tank-town.
1942		W. Winchell On Broadway 10 July [synd. col.] [Manhattan] will look like a tank town when the stiffer rationing comes.
1955		E. Hoagland Cat Man 104: [S]uave Nigas [a circus dog], as big as a pail, he’d blitzkrieg the hydrants like lightning had hit, he’d saunter, he’d romp, and show that terror-struck, quaking tank town just what the hell a dog was like that had been everywhere.
1968		Springfield Leader & Press (MO) 26 Sept. 37/3: The congressman spoke ‘to take objection to Mr Starne’s use of the term ‘tank town’.
1970		T. Southern Blue Movie (1974) 62: ‘Best head in the city!’ What fuckin’ city? This tank?
1977		P. Hamill Flesh and Blood (1978) 247: He wants you fightin’ in these fuckin’ tank towns against these fuckin’ stiffs for no fuckin’ money.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 306: Tanktown (slightly larger, theoretically, than a jerkwater town, since trains actually stopped to take on water at tanktowns).

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1915

S. Ford Shorty McCabe on the Job 115: This high party with the wide, stooped shoulders and the rugged face standin’ there beamin’ at me genial and folksy. [...] A tank station delegate and no mistake!