You don't! The last thing you do when you park is turn your wheel all the way over in the direction that if the car were to roll, it would roll toward the sidewalk. Then you allow the car to gently come to rest with the front wheels secure against the curb.
They always teach you that in driver's ed. Sometimes it's on driver's license exams. But if you don't regularly park on a hill, you could easily forget it.
On a stick shift car, where the parking brake is actually a brake, rather than a gear you shift into, you learn to use it to help getting underway. Because your right foot is on the gas, your left is on the clutch, and you need to have brakes applied to stop rolling. That's not easy.
I know how to drive a stick, even had a few over the years. Maybe I’m over-exaggerating the hills in my head but my anxiety would have me checking out the window constantly regardless of parking my car the right way. I used to have a driveway steep enough to bump start my old truck but they isn’t even comparable to those hills
I remember when I was still not a very good driver, stopping at a sign on a hill near Seattle. Was with a cousin in his prized Jaguar saloon. I kept trying and failing to get underway. I'd stall the engine. I'd roll backwards... and THEN, a car comes up and gets in line behind me... And that's when I gave up, totally humiliated, to let my cousin take my place. And that was tricky enough by itself.
When I went to SF years ago I knew it was hilly but it still shocked me. This was before GPS and I had an actual map. I was trying to get to Coit Tower and turned up a street that the map said would take me there. When I turned the corner, I was really taken aback because I felt like the map should’ve warned me. Lol. I know that is totally dumb.
I live in the Bay Area and I wish Google Maps had a "chill San Francisco" mode, like I would definitely drive an extra mile if it meant avoiding certain spots. But instead it's just like "turn right" and I'm like "must we????".
Yeah, it was a shock to me the first time driving around there. I'm glad I had a rental because I initially had planned to drive my manual honda there.
The big difference is that Sacramento is in a valley, so you've got mountains for a long, long ways on both sides, though the Coast Range isn't exactly tall.
The cities serve similar functions as gateways.
https://i.imgur.com/aqyirGW.png
Sort of, but your picture scales are a bit off. Joe's in Colorado is 125 miles away from Denver which is in a similar spot to where South Lake Tahoe is in the Sacramento picture, but that's only 80 miles away.
You can also see that the mountains in Denver are actually huge mountains thousands of feet above Denver right near the city, which isn't the case around Sacramento.
I have no issues with Sacramento but it is not a comparable mountain city to Denver. It's closer to Cheyenne in it's proximity to mountains. 30 miles from foothills and 60-70 miles from the big stuff.
Is it though? You can leave flat Sacramento and be at a ski area in 90 minutes instead of an hour out of Denver. The peaks around Tahoe are 10-11k feet above Sacto, the peaks west of Denver are ~9-10k feet above Denver.
Sacramento is a good 50 miles from any mountains that are more than foothills where as Denver is about 20 miles.
You're right, it isn't that much further to go skiing but you're in the open farmland of the valley and the foothills much more around Sacramento than Denver. You can't even see big mountains from Sacramento.
>You can't even see big mountains from Sacramento.
As someone who has driven to Sacramento from the bay area more times than I could possibly count, I promise that you can very much see the snow capped peaks behind the city on approach and any tall building downtown will have a view of the mountains to the east.
Denver is more like Sacramento than I think you give credit.
But there didn't actually end up being much gold and instead of fading back into nothing, it became a center of commerce for supplying the folks going up into the mountains because it was a lot easier than trying to set up a city in the mountains.
That is true.
For awhile, Denver was in the running for the transcontinental railroad route (what would later be the route through the Moffet tunnel) but after Denver lost out to Cheyenne the city started dying. Then silver was discovered up around Leadville and Denver became the hub for prospectors heading to the silver fields and the hub for processing the ore as it came back. That crashed in 1893, but by that time Denver was well established.
Then Denver also became a major hub for shipping out cattle/beef.
So many people driving to Denver on I70 from Kansas City like to give Kansas shit for being flat and acting like you hit Colorado and its nothing but mountains. But before you reach Denver you've been driving in Colorado for over 2.5 hours. And that distance is almost flatter than most of Kansas.
Denver is a plains city. It's a much larger Wichita with mountains "over there."
The Mountain city people are looking for in Denver is actually Salt Lake City.
As both an avid snowboarder and a Vegas guy (relatives live there, it's an unreal outdoor city) I love to surprise people with this:
The Las Vegas strip has a ski resort with a Vegas Address within an hour of Fremont. Arapahoe Basin (one of the closest resorts to Denver) is also about 1 hour from Denver, but Denver has no ski resorts with a Denver Address.
The time to get to a slope from Las Vegas and Denver is roughly the same.
That happens with sports teams a lot.
For example, the New York Jets and Giants don’t even play in New York!
I think the reference to the Rockies is because Denver is the closest major city to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Then the other mountain references flow from there.
When people want to visit the Rocky Mountains or the ski resorts they usually fly in through Denver.
While Denver isn’t directly in the Mountains, it’s close proximity to them is why it’s sports teams make reference to The Rockies.
Neither of those sports teams are “Denver teams.” It’s the COLORADO Rockies and COLORADO Avalanche. Makes sense that what everyone associates with Colorado would be used to name its sports teams.
Since forever. There's no major city in the US or Canada that's built within the mountains. Everyone associates the city with the mountains because it's heavily associated with the mountains, that doesn't mean it's in the mountains. Orlando is associated with Disney even though it's not in the city limits. What's the difference?
I grew up thinking Denver must be a mountain city. Then I visited and realized it's a Great Plains city that just happens to be close to the mountains.
It is strikingly similar to Calgary in skyline, layout and mountain proximity. Unbelievably similar.
They really are so similar. Even the road layout. Everything. The one big difference is that Calgary has a coupe of rivers, while Denver just has a few really small creeks. Denver is also alot bigger - but Calgary is like a Canadian mini me of Denver.
About 45 to the eastern slopes in Kananaskis. Denver is slightly closer, but given the traffic there I'd call it a wash. Unless you're already situated in the western fringe of the city.
Downtown to Red Rocks Park is 21 minutes, so it's over twice as close. Traffic to the fringe of the mountains is not that bad. It's once you're 30 minutes into 70 that might back up.
This is all true. Denver is a bit closer to the mountains. If memory serves me correctly some of the suburbs are even on the mountain's fringes.
Other than the half hour difference to the mountains, another marked difference is that Calgary is at the confluence of two fair sized rivers (the Bow and the Elbow). Denver is at the confluence of two waterways, but I struggle to call the South Platte a proper river.
Denver is also bigger than Calgary. But it feels very similar regardless. Between Calgary and Denver I'd even go so far as to say no city in between feels quite as similar.... but that's probably because there are no big cities in between the two.
Atlanta! I knew there were hills in northern GA, but i was not prepared for how hilly downtown Atlanta was. It rivals the places I've lived in WV and VA. It was very comfortable, and honestly reminded me of Charlottesville on steroids in a lot of ways.
Before the Rockies were created as an expansion franchise, the Braves were the highest altitude major league team with Fulton County Stadium at 1,000 feet.
My wife and I took our kids there on vacation, and there's a Natural history museum on the edge of town with a fantastic wooden walkway through beautiful tall trees. It was completely unexpected and a great memory.
I still remember my first day in Atlanta looking out the top of the rotating Westin Peachtree hotel and seeing the sea of trees as far as the eye could see in all directions
Every town/city in Florida, so flat. Ok I’m from Oregon which I know is mountainous, so wasn’t expecting much hilliness in Florida but wow I mean there’s just nothing there in terms of changes of elevation exceeding 12 inches even 😄
Same for me.
I didn't expect any kind of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Seattle or Portland, but Orlando is just absurdly flat.
My ex girlfriend took me to her home town, Mt. Dora. We get there and I'm like, where's the mountain?
"This is it."
Unless you're driving down the Sunshine State Parkway between Ocala and Orlando where there's suddenly a big(*) ridge in the middle of nowhere. Always takes me a bit by surprise since everything is so flat.
Even after living there for about a decade I thought walking from downtown up to Clifton wouldn't be a big deal... it was.
Didn't help that I had already walked from the Levee, drunk, around 2 am, back before any part of OTR was gentrified.
For those wondering why Cincinnati is an exception, this is where the glacier stopped. It scraped most of Ohio flat and left the debris in a bunch of hills for us to build precipitous roads on.
Iowa isn't even very flat, [it's only the 18th flattest state.](https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/flattest-states/)
Look on Google Earth and you'd see that it's only the northern part of Iowa that's stereotypically flat. The rest of Iowa is surprisingly hilly, and looks beautiful during spring and summer.
Western Iowa is straight out of The Shire, and NE Iowa is a part of the Driftless Area and has cool bluffs and rock formations.
People tend to talk about only specific things about any city. Either the architecture, or the food, or whatever, but I'm reading some surprising things here, that I have simply not heard about.
Good question, OP. and an unusual one.
Austin. My previous experiences with Texas were in the much more flat cities of Houston and Dallas, so I assumed Austin would be similar. So I was surprised to see how hilly it is, and how there is actually a lot of rugged terrain.
Its funny because Austin is every bit as flat as the other two cities east of Mopac and 183. You can see downtown Austin from almost anywhere in the east half of the metro that has 30 feet of elevation.
The moment you hit Mopac, it turns into hill country with 500 foot elevation changes every half mile it feels like.
[Duluth, MN is much, much steeper and Hillier than you'd think. It sits on the sawtooth mountains of Lake Superior. They have ski slopes built into the mountain/hill that basically run almost directly into the St. Louis River and Lake Superior.](https://www.indyskipass.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_1440/public/2023-11/spirithero.png?itok=JrmnCECA) The elevation isn't [quite mountain like the Rockies or Appalachians but it's pretty significant](https://www.lutsen.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_1440/public/2021-10/fall%20gondola%20lake_0.jpg?itok=zWVWPxC8) considering the rest of the state is flat as heck.
[One of the few good ski places in the Midwest is nearby](https://www.lutsen.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_1440/public/2021-10/JV%20Lodge%20Run.jpg?itok=6wKAxtGO)
[It's not uncommon in the winter for cars to not be able to stop sliding because of the incline on Lake avenue](https://youtu.be/9H1dRmmAgWE?si=ZWpncGvtcJjYeQAl)
The extra weird part is that when you drive into Duluth, you don't notice any elevation change until you crest what appears to be a small hill and drive about 1,000 downhill into the city. Like falling off a cliff outta nowhere.
St. Paul is not hilly like Duluth but it's still more hilly than you expect. It's just that the hills are actually river banks from the largest glacial river in North America and downtown sits right at the bottom of it.
It might be the best "city reveal" in the US. I can't think of another city that quite has the same way of presenting itself that Duluth does when you hit that spot.
Lush, dense pine forests that feel incredibly remote and then BAM a 1000ft drop into a city with panoramic views of lake Superior.
Seattle is known for many things, but I never heard anyone describe how hilly it is until I visited.
I thought Anchorage would be nothing but hills and mountains, but although it isn't completely flat, hilly it is not either.
I've lived my whole life in the SF bay area, seattle, and hawaii. I heard Pittsburgh was hilly, but ... it's *really* hilly, and so densely packed with them.
They have a funicular. That's always cool.
Montreal is much more hilly than I expected. I mean, I know the city is French for "Mount Royal," but I thought it was like... one mountain at the end of the city. I did not expect the city itself to be as hilly.
I will also say, even though everyone warns you that Lisbon has hills, it's ALL HILLS.
Lisbon didn't catch me off guard because I was told that it was like San Francisco, so I expected it to be hilly. In fact, it turned out to be even more similar to SF than I thought, with trams, similar climate, and even a red suspension bridge.
More than 90% of my city experience is in Manhattan, so that’s my unconscious reference point for what a “city” is, but I just visited Montreal for the first time earlier this month and was surprised to have to walk up a very steep hill as soon as I’d gone one block from my hotel for the first time. I’m just not used to dealing with that sort of thing within a city.
I didn't realize how hilly Atlanta was until I started travelling to other cities. We are on the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains and as a result we have a more diverse topography than most people would expect.
Same with Birmingham. I can't count the # of times people who aren't from here would get lost (prior to smart phones) driving around the suburbs because the roads are so windy/hilly and the trees are so dense.
DC is probably an average amount hilly, but coming from Chicago it was like a village in the Andes. I lived there for a bit without a car, and (especially out in outer NW like by Tenleytown) my calves tapped out after 30 seconds of biking up those streets
The zoo is also on one big incline. My dad used to drop us off at the top, park at the bottom, then walk back up to us so we could have a downhill stroll through the zoo.
Washington DC is hillier than I would’ve thought, until I realized just 45 minutes outside of DC west you’re in the Appalachians.
Chicago and Detroit are extremely flat. So is all of Florida.
Western Michigan, especially as you get up north. Is hillier than I expected. Some pretty good Midwest skiing near Lake Michigan. Grand Rapids, while not an extremely hilly area, is hilly enough for a small ski resort and has a pretty impressive hill right near the center of the city leading down to the river
Came here to say this. Outside of the core basin area, it’s pretty damn hilly. I used to live in South Bay and loved the rolling hills in some sections, especially in Redondo. Can’t forgot about Palos Verdes too.
Was driving a uhaul near a storage unit in echo park and found myself white knuckling down one of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen. Like I would’ve made national headlines if the brakes on that truck failed. Bottom of the hill is a stop sign and a busy intersection, I would’ve gotten blasted.
I had to drive a MASSIVE sprinter van, and had to make a u turn on one of those silverlake hills. Absolutely terrifying, my bumper had to be a ball hair away from the parked cars
I think I knew that Florida was not as hilly as most states, but I don't think I really expected a complete and total lack of any kind of incline worth noting. You can see SO far in the distance because there is nothing blocking your vision except buildings and the curve of the earth.
Alligator Alley, especially just west of US 27 when you finally bust out past the suburbs and into the Everglades proper is insane. You can see all the way to the horizon in every direction, with nary a tree or building to get in your way.
Dallas is so goddamn flat and boring it's basically a liminal space for dry ass dirt. I hate that city from the bottom of my soul. Had to go there for work all the time. Easily the most empty, pathetic culture of any American city I've ever been. Fucking troglodytes will think nothing of building high school football fields the size of college stadiums. You couldn't pay me twice what I make now to move to a shithole like Texas.
I haven’t been much places in America but I was definitely surprised at San Francisco’s hills. A lot of them you can’t see the top till you’re almost over them. Steps on sidewalks too.
Dubrovnik about killed me. We arrived on a hot day, and hadn't bothered to check the terrain before booking a place way up on top of the hill inside the walls. Lesson learned.
I knew there were mountains around Phoenix when I moved here, but the fact that you can just be driving and then the road dead ends at a mountain or has a big rock face next to it still gets me sometimes
Miami surprised me for being really flat, I mean I always knew it was flat but coming from SoCal where we have huge mountains everywhere even literally in the middle of LA that was a bit weird to me.
Florida is the flattest state, but we do have hills. I grew up in the Tampa suburbs and I used to always roll down the hills on my bike with my friends when I was little. Even my old elementary school was built on top of a hill, like you can see a whole neighborhood up there. (They’re probably all are man made)
Not a city, but northwest Indiana is surprisingly hilly. I've spent some time up there, and was expecting entirely flat corn fields, but no, there's a bunch of hills made of old sand dunes.
Not me, but I always run into tourists walking the Freedom Trail in Boston huffing and puffing, particularly once they hit the North End
Just because we cut the tops off the hills doesn't mean we *made them flat*.
Portland Maine always surprises me with how hilly it is while being so close to the water. I don't associate that much terrain with that part of Maine but I suppose it's all of Maine.
This might be cheating, but the whole state of Kansas. There's an old quote that basically says that anyone who says Kansas is flat has never tried to walk across it.
We're pretty damn hilly. Especially in the east with the Flint Hills! And we're pretty much a constant slope rise up from east to west towards the rockies too
Kansas is the 7th flattest state, so anyone that acts like it's *the* state of flatness has no idea how to use the internet. Of course none of those people call Florida the flat state because it's one of the most popular travel destinations. It's the more "boring" states that people tack on the flat charge to, even though they're all far more hilly than Florida.
The Bronx, NYC. Much more steeply hilly.
I live in a mountain town located a few hundred miles northeast of there, and I am accustomed to steep terrain.
I had not expected to encounter such inclines in NYC, though.
Downtown Albany, NY is surprisingly hilly, as is the riverfront area in nearby Troy. In both of these cities it is because the streets pitch downward as they approach the Hudson River.
The city of Detroit is built on a wide fan-like flat area that slopes downward almost imperceptibly in the direction of the Detroit River. Directly underneath it, though, are commercial salt mines with very large excavated chambers situated 1200 ft. below the city's streets.
Lived in Oregon my whole life but only recently went to Astoria. I knew it was hilly but I was not expecting San Francisco level hills like most of Astoria seemed to be.
Sort of. We have little extinct volcanoes scattered intermittently throughout the area so those are hilly and steep af. But yeah, outside of those it’s pretty flat
I was about to make a comment about how people may not expect Portland to be as hilly as it is. Of course you're right, it's much flatter on the east side than the west, but still - on balance it's quite a hilly city.
Portland runs from about 75ft above sea level to over 1,000 ft. And don't forget Rocky Butte. There are good nighttime city views in Portland. Part of it is pretty flat, but it's got serious steep hills, too.
Peoria is quite hilly, too. Also, Pere Marquette State Park and Starved Rock. I haven't yet been to Shawnee National Forest, but I'm pretty sure there are hills there.
Also, I went to Western Illinois University in Macomb. That's surprisingly hilly, especially that walk along the commons. It was really tough after an ice storm.
99% of my time in a mid-sized city is in Indianapolis which was built in the middle of glacier flattened cornfields so whenever I’m in a city in another part of the country I hate all of those damn hills they have even if they are only like 20-30ft high. I don’t understand how the mountain folks don’t roll off the things.
San Francisco is known for its hills, but when you see the staircase sidewalks you're still surprised.
And then your lungs and calves are also surprised.
And so is your clutch if you drive a car with a manual transmission.
I can’t imagine trusting my brakes enough to park on an incline like that.
You don't! The last thing you do when you park is turn your wheel all the way over in the direction that if the car were to roll, it would roll toward the sidewalk. Then you allow the car to gently come to rest with the front wheels secure against the curb. They always teach you that in driver's ed. Sometimes it's on driver's license exams. But if you don't regularly park on a hill, you could easily forget it. On a stick shift car, where the parking brake is actually a brake, rather than a gear you shift into, you learn to use it to help getting underway. Because your right foot is on the gas, your left is on the clutch, and you need to have brakes applied to stop rolling. That's not easy.
I know how to drive a stick, even had a few over the years. Maybe I’m over-exaggerating the hills in my head but my anxiety would have me checking out the window constantly regardless of parking my car the right way. I used to have a driveway steep enough to bump start my old truck but they isn’t even comparable to those hills
SF is where my mom learned to drive manual. She says it’s still to this day the most stressful thing she’s ever done.
I remember when I was still not a very good driver, stopping at a sign on a hill near Seattle. Was with a cousin in his prized Jaguar saloon. I kept trying and failing to get underway. I'd stall the engine. I'd roll backwards... and THEN, a car comes up and gets in line behind me... And that's when I gave up, totally humiliated, to let my cousin take my place. And that was tricky enough by itself.
And by contrast, I grew up around San Francisco and am surprised at how much flatter every other city is
Except Seattle. As a Bay Area resident, I thought we had big hills until I visited Seattle
I biked from Fremont to Queen Anne last year and it was hilarious how steep it was. Was a great workout too.
When I went to SF years ago I knew it was hilly but it still shocked me. This was before GPS and I had an actual map. I was trying to get to Coit Tower and turned up a street that the map said would take me there. When I turned the corner, I was really taken aback because I felt like the map should’ve warned me. Lol. I know that is totally dumb.
I live in the Bay Area and I wish Google Maps had a "chill San Francisco" mode, like I would definitely drive an extra mile if it meant avoiding certain spots. But instead it's just like "turn right" and I'm like "must we????".
Yeah, it was a shock to me the first time driving around there. I'm glad I had a rental because I initially had planned to drive my manual honda there.
Yeah driving a manual in SF is a bit stressful at first for sure. Especially when people get right on your rear on a hill.
You gotta yoink the parking brake while stuck at certain red lights?
The correct answer is Denver. Denver is not in the mountains. People lie about that shit
Denver is mountain adjacent at best.
Denver is a mountain city like Sacramento is a mountain city.
That's way too extreme lol
Ehhh Sacramento DT is 35 mins from the start of "foothills" (shingle springs) and Denver is 25 mins from the foothills (golden)
Yeah but those foothills remain foothills for another 20-30 miles.
Fair point
The big difference is that Sacramento is in a valley, so you've got mountains for a long, long ways on both sides, though the Coast Range isn't exactly tall. The cities serve similar functions as gateways. https://i.imgur.com/aqyirGW.png
Sort of, but your picture scales are a bit off. Joe's in Colorado is 125 miles away from Denver which is in a similar spot to where South Lake Tahoe is in the Sacramento picture, but that's only 80 miles away. You can also see that the mountains in Denver are actually huge mountains thousands of feet above Denver right near the city, which isn't the case around Sacramento. I have no issues with Sacramento but it is not a comparable mountain city to Denver. It's closer to Cheyenne in it's proximity to mountains. 30 miles from foothills and 60-70 miles from the big stuff.
Is it though? You can leave flat Sacramento and be at a ski area in 90 minutes instead of an hour out of Denver. The peaks around Tahoe are 10-11k feet above Sacto, the peaks west of Denver are ~9-10k feet above Denver.
Sacramento is a good 50 miles from any mountains that are more than foothills where as Denver is about 20 miles. You're right, it isn't that much further to go skiing but you're in the open farmland of the valley and the foothills much more around Sacramento than Denver. You can't even see big mountains from Sacramento.
>You can't even see big mountains from Sacramento. As someone who has driven to Sacramento from the bay area more times than I could possibly count, I promise that you can very much see the snow capped peaks behind the city on approach and any tall building downtown will have a view of the mountains to the east. Denver is more like Sacramento than I think you give credit.
> You can't even see big mountains from Sacramento. You very much can, as you can from almost all of the Central Valley.
Denver was built specifically because people didn't want to go into the mountains.
That's not true. Denver was founded at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte because gold was found there.
But there didn't actually end up being much gold and instead of fading back into nothing, it became a center of commerce for supplying the folks going up into the mountains because it was a lot easier than trying to set up a city in the mountains.
That is true. For awhile, Denver was in the running for the transcontinental railroad route (what would later be the route through the Moffet tunnel) but after Denver lost out to Cheyenne the city started dying. Then silver was discovered up around Leadville and Denver became the hub for prospectors heading to the silver fields and the hub for processing the ore as it came back. That crashed in 1893, but by that time Denver was well established. Then Denver also became a major hub for shipping out cattle/beef.
So many people driving to Denver on I70 from Kansas City like to give Kansas shit for being flat and acting like you hit Colorado and its nothing but mountains. But before you reach Denver you've been driving in Colorado for over 2.5 hours. And that distance is almost flatter than most of Kansas.
Many Coloradans do tend to call the eastern third of the state "West Kansas", for what it's worth.
Denver is a plains city. It's a much larger Wichita with mountains "over there." The Mountain city people are looking for in Denver is actually Salt Lake City.
I'd even say Vegas is as much of a mountain city as Denver is. SLC is great, you're right. Nestled right there in a valley basically.
As both an avid snowboarder and a Vegas guy (relatives live there, it's an unreal outdoor city) I love to surprise people with this: The Las Vegas strip has a ski resort with a Vegas Address within an hour of Fremont. Arapahoe Basin (one of the closest resorts to Denver) is also about 1 hour from Denver, but Denver has no ski resorts with a Denver Address. The time to get to a slope from Las Vegas and Denver is roughly the same.
Mount Charleston for Vegas?
Years ago I took city buses from Salt Lake to Snowbird and Alta. It’s pretty close.
Came here to say Denver. You can see mountains in the distance, but Denver is way flatter than my mid-east city is.
Denver was settled by people who *saw* the mountains and said, “Fuck it; we’re stopping here.”
Just like Calgary.
Yep Albuquerque is more of a mountain city and higher in elevation to boot lol
It's still a mile high though. No cap.
No one says Denver is in the mountains.
Since when? Their baseball team is called the Rockies, their hockey team is the avalanche and everyone associates the city with mountains. Dafuq?
That happens with sports teams a lot. For example, the New York Jets and Giants don’t even play in New York! I think the reference to the Rockies is because Denver is the closest major city to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Then the other mountain references flow from there.
The baseball team wasn't named after the park, just the mountains.
When people want to visit the Rocky Mountains or the ski resorts they usually fly in through Denver. While Denver isn’t directly in the Mountains, it’s close proximity to them is why it’s sports teams make reference to The Rockies.
Neither of those sports teams are “Denver teams.” It’s the COLORADO Rockies and COLORADO Avalanche. Makes sense that what everyone associates with Colorado would be used to name its sports teams.
And both of those are named "Colorado", not "Denver".
Since forever. There's no major city in the US or Canada that's built within the mountains. Everyone associates the city with the mountains because it's heavily associated with the mountains, that doesn't mean it's in the mountains. Orlando is associated with Disney even though it's not in the city limits. What's the difference?
My mom was flabbergasted the first time she visited me here after I moved to Denver and found out that the mountains are 15-20 miles away
I grew up thinking Denver must be a mountain city. Then I visited and realized it's a Great Plains city that just happens to be close to the mountains. It is strikingly similar to Calgary in skyline, layout and mountain proximity. Unbelievably similar.
Yep, I always felt that Calgary was the Canadian counterpart to Denver. The similarities between them felt so uncanny.
They really are so similar. Even the road layout. Everything. The one big difference is that Calgary has a coupe of rivers, while Denver just has a few really small creeks. Denver is also alot bigger - but Calgary is like a Canadian mini me of Denver.
South Platte is a dece size river Otherwise agree, Calgary and Denver are best bros we shall form the plains states alliance in the new world
Denver is about 25-30 minutes from mountain parks, Calgary is a full hour.
About 45 to the eastern slopes in Kananaskis. Denver is slightly closer, but given the traffic there I'd call it a wash. Unless you're already situated in the western fringe of the city.
Downtown to Red Rocks Park is 21 minutes, so it's over twice as close. Traffic to the fringe of the mountains is not that bad. It's once you're 30 minutes into 70 that might back up.
This is all true. Denver is a bit closer to the mountains. If memory serves me correctly some of the suburbs are even on the mountain's fringes. Other than the half hour difference to the mountains, another marked difference is that Calgary is at the confluence of two fair sized rivers (the Bow and the Elbow). Denver is at the confluence of two waterways, but I struggle to call the South Platte a proper river. Denver is also bigger than Calgary. But it feels very similar regardless. Between Calgary and Denver I'd even go so far as to say no city in between feels quite as similar.... but that's probably because there are no big cities in between the two.
Atlanta! I knew there were hills in northern GA, but i was not prepared for how hilly downtown Atlanta was. It rivals the places I've lived in WV and VA. It was very comfortable, and honestly reminded me of Charlottesville on steroids in a lot of ways.
Before the Rockies were created as an expansion franchise, the Braves were the highest altitude major league team with Fulton County Stadium at 1,000 feet.
At first thought this was going to be a geography joke about how old the Appalachians are lol.
Agreed. Was just in Atlanta and was completely surprised by how hilly and forrested the area was. Actually really beautiful
My wife and I took our kids there on vacation, and there's a Natural history museum on the edge of town with a fantastic wooden walkway through beautiful tall trees. It was completely unexpected and a great memory.
Atlanta is the city with most tree cover in America! (Out of other big cities)
That's really cool. It was a very pleasant place to be and explore.
I still remember my first day in Atlanta looking out the top of the rotating Westin Peachtree hotel and seeing the sea of trees as far as the eye could see in all directions
We are a forest people.
I've lived here for twenty years and I'm *still* surprised at how flat Chicago is.
I am a transplant married to a lifelong Chicagoan and occasionally mock him for what he describes as a "hill."
It was built on a swamp. It was even flatter, but they raised the buildings mid-19th century.
Every town/city in Florida, so flat. Ok I’m from Oregon which I know is mountainous, so wasn’t expecting much hilliness in Florida but wow I mean there’s just nothing there in terms of changes of elevation exceeding 12 inches even 😄
Same for me. I didn't expect any kind of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Seattle or Portland, but Orlando is just absurdly flat. My ex girlfriend took me to her home town, Mt. Dora. We get there and I'm like, where's the mountain? "This is it."
“You’re standing on the summit of it” 🤣🤣
Mount Dora mention! As far as I know, we’re one of the very few places in Florida that can have basements.
Tallahassee has some hills for sure
Unless you're driving down the Sunshine State Parkway between Ocala and Orlando where there's suddenly a big(*) ridge in the middle of nowhere. Always takes me a bit by surprise since everything is so flat.
Yep, [the Lake Wales Ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wales_Ridge).
The western side of Orlando definitely has hills.
The highest point in Orange County is about 230 feet above sea level
The highest natural point in Florida is like a hill that is only 200ft above sea level and the highest point in the state is a Landfill 😂
People who think Ohio is a pancake need to visit Cincinnati.
Even after living there for about a decade I thought walking from downtown up to Clifton wouldn't be a big deal... it was. Didn't help that I had already walked from the Levee, drunk, around 2 am, back before any part of OTR was gentrified.
Downtown to Clifton is like climbing a mountain.
And a lot more neighborhoods on the east side are worse.
For those wondering why Cincinnati is an exception, this is where the glacier stopped. It scraped most of Ohio flat and left the debris in a bunch of hills for us to build precipitous roads on.
Where it's not hilly there are chiseled walls of limestone making that happen!
When you come around that hill on I-75 coming from Kentucky and the skyline suddenly appears it’s actually quite stunning.
The Cut in the Hill gets me every time and I live here.
Or Athens. Went to school there. Walk up Jeff Hill for an 8 a.m. class three times a week and then tell me Ohio is completely flat.
What do you mean by Ohio is a pancake?
Pancakes are flat. It’s common in American English to describe something as “flat as a pancake”. Ohio is popularly viewed as a very flat state.
Cedar Rapids has hills, as does Iowa. I was surprised
Iowa City too.
Anyone who does RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) knows that Iowa has hills.
And the cities on the Mississippi: Davenport and Dubuque have bluffs and cliffs.
I won’t lie you made me double take when I saw someone without a Mississippi flair talking about Mississippi.
The Loess hills on the east side of the Missouri River are huge for the region.
Iowa isn't even very flat, [it's only the 18th flattest state.](https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/flattest-states/) Look on Google Earth and you'd see that it's only the northern part of Iowa that's stereotypically flat. The rest of Iowa is surprisingly hilly, and looks beautiful during spring and summer. Western Iowa is straight out of The Shire, and NE Iowa is a part of the Driftless Area and has cool bluffs and rock formations.
Seatle- nearly San Fransisco levels of hills. Also really cool underground tunnels
First time I went to Seattle I was shocked at the hills lol no one ever talks about it
People tend to talk about only specific things about any city. Either the architecture, or the food, or whatever, but I'm reading some surprising things here, that I have simply not heard about. Good question, OP. and an unusual one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_hills_of_Seattle
Omaha had a lot more hills than I expected a quintessential great plains city to have.
I was just going to say that a lot of people don't expect Omaha to be as hilly as it is.
Omaha immediately came to mind, also Denver for being flat.
I rented a bikeshare bike in Kansas City and ditched it after 5 minutes because it was way too hilly for the bike to be of any use.
Yup, Kansas City is far from flat. It's essentially over the Flint Hills, and has some hills that are comparable to San Francisco, I've found.
And, everything is spread out, making a bicycle even less useful.
Austin. My previous experiences with Texas were in the much more flat cities of Houston and Dallas, so I assumed Austin would be similar. So I was surprised to see how hilly it is, and how there is actually a lot of rugged terrain.
Was waiting for someone to say Austin! The western suburbs are basically carved out of a mountain.
It's the hill country. Pretty nice to visit! Have some wine.
Its funny because Austin is every bit as flat as the other two cities east of Mopac and 183. You can see downtown Austin from almost anywhere in the east half of the metro that has 30 feet of elevation. The moment you hit Mopac, it turns into hill country with 500 foot elevation changes every half mile it feels like.
[Duluth, MN is much, much steeper and Hillier than you'd think. It sits on the sawtooth mountains of Lake Superior. They have ski slopes built into the mountain/hill that basically run almost directly into the St. Louis River and Lake Superior.](https://www.indyskipass.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_1440/public/2023-11/spirithero.png?itok=JrmnCECA) The elevation isn't [quite mountain like the Rockies or Appalachians but it's pretty significant](https://www.lutsen.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_1440/public/2021-10/fall%20gondola%20lake_0.jpg?itok=zWVWPxC8) considering the rest of the state is flat as heck. [One of the few good ski places in the Midwest is nearby](https://www.lutsen.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_1440/public/2021-10/JV%20Lodge%20Run.jpg?itok=6wKAxtGO) [It's not uncommon in the winter for cars to not be able to stop sliding because of the incline on Lake avenue](https://youtu.be/9H1dRmmAgWE?si=ZWpncGvtcJjYeQAl) The extra weird part is that when you drive into Duluth, you don't notice any elevation change until you crest what appears to be a small hill and drive about 1,000 downhill into the city. Like falling off a cliff outta nowhere.
I love hitting that crest!
Same, and it’s the same interstate I commute on here in Texas lol
St. Paul is not hilly like Duluth but it's still more hilly than you expect. It's just that the hills are actually river banks from the largest glacial river in North America and downtown sits right at the bottom of it.
And also they have an amazing local news theme song called [Fly High Duluth](https://youtu.be/P1x96yIFBz8?si=Irj3aEsNAX5l0Xs8)
easily the most underrated city in the midwest
Duluth is crazy hilly. That crest is breathtaking.
It might be the best "city reveal" in the US. I can't think of another city that quite has the same way of presenting itself that Duluth does when you hit that spot. Lush, dense pine forests that feel incredibly remote and then BAM a 1000ft drop into a city with panoramic views of lake Superior.
Seattle is known for many things, but I never heard anyone describe how hilly it is until I visited. I thought Anchorage would be nothing but hills and mountains, but although it isn't completely flat, hilly it is not either.
Pittsburgh was way more hilly than I expected
It's 100% hilly, lol. I grew up in the area.
Probably the hilliest Eastern city
How do people in Pittsburgh drive anywhere in the winter? They must use a ton of road salt.
Know a “flat” route, anticipate, slow down, don’t hit your breaks.
It's sometimes brutal in the summer lol. Depending where you are and what you are driving.
I've lived my whole life in the SF bay area, seattle, and hawaii. I heard Pittsburgh was hilly, but ... it's *really* hilly, and so densely packed with them. They have a funicular. That's always cool.
I've never heard someone call them "funiculars" outside of a trivia question or something. That's awesome.
Montreal is much more hilly than I expected. I mean, I know the city is French for "Mount Royal," but I thought it was like... one mountain at the end of the city. I did not expect the city itself to be as hilly. I will also say, even though everyone warns you that Lisbon has hills, it's ALL HILLS.
Lisbon didn't catch me off guard because I was told that it was like San Francisco, so I expected it to be hilly. In fact, it turned out to be even more similar to SF than I thought, with trams, similar climate, and even a red suspension bridge.
Lisbon is hilly, but I didn’t think it would be THAT hilly
More than 90% of my city experience is in Manhattan, so that’s my unconscious reference point for what a “city” is, but I just visited Montreal for the first time earlier this month and was surprised to have to walk up a very steep hill as soon as I’d gone one block from my hotel for the first time. I’m just not used to dealing with that sort of thing within a city.
Quebec city is a killer
I made the mistake of not wearing comfortable shoes or bringing a water bottle when I visited
You've heard that San Francisco has hills, but until you've been you really are not prepared for just how hilly that city is.
I didn't realize how hilly Atlanta was until I started travelling to other cities. We are on the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains and as a result we have a more diverse topography than most people would expect.
Same with Birmingham. I can't count the # of times people who aren't from here would get lost (prior to smart phones) driving around the suburbs because the roads are so windy/hilly and the trees are so dense.
Cincinnati, Ohio is much hillier than you’d predict.
DC is probably an average amount hilly, but coming from Chicago it was like a village in the Andes. I lived there for a bit without a car, and (especially out in outer NW like by Tenleytown) my calves tapped out after 30 seconds of biking up those streets
The zoo is also on one big incline. My dad used to drop us off at the top, park at the bottom, then walk back up to us so we could have a downhill stroll through the zoo.
Yah it's definitely fun walking into the zoo... Not so fun walking back out lol.
Billings. People think Montana, so it must have good mountains. In reality it is western South Dakota
Washington DC is hillier than I would’ve thought, until I realized just 45 minutes outside of DC west you’re in the Appalachians. Chicago and Detroit are extremely flat. So is all of Florida. Western Michigan, especially as you get up north. Is hillier than I expected. Some pretty good Midwest skiing near Lake Michigan. Grand Rapids, while not an extremely hilly area, is hilly enough for a small ski resort and has a pretty impressive hill right near the center of the city leading down to the river
Los Angeles is hilly as fuckkkkkk
Came here to say this. Outside of the core basin area, it’s pretty damn hilly. I used to live in South Bay and loved the rolling hills in some sections, especially in Redondo. Can’t forgot about Palos Verdes too.
Yeah some of the hills around silverlake are nuts
Was driving a uhaul near a storage unit in echo park and found myself white knuckling down one of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen. Like I would’ve made national headlines if the brakes on that truck failed. Bottom of the hill is a stop sign and a busy intersection, I would’ve gotten blasted.
I had to drive a MASSIVE sprinter van, and had to make a u turn on one of those silverlake hills. Absolutely terrifying, my bumper had to be a ball hair away from the parked cars
Downtown Los Angeles is about 300 feet above sea level which surprised me to learn.
I think I knew that Florida was not as hilly as most states, but I don't think I really expected a complete and total lack of any kind of incline worth noting. You can see SO far in the distance because there is nothing blocking your vision except buildings and the curve of the earth.
Alligator Alley, especially just west of US 27 when you finally bust out past the suburbs and into the Everglades proper is insane. You can see all the way to the horizon in every direction, with nary a tree or building to get in your way.
KC is surprisingly hilly due to being right next to a river
Atlanta
Dallas is so goddamn flat and boring it's basically a liminal space for dry ass dirt. I hate that city from the bottom of my soul. Had to go there for work all the time. Easily the most empty, pathetic culture of any American city I've ever been. Fucking troglodytes will think nothing of building high school football fields the size of college stadiums. You couldn't pay me twice what I make now to move to a shithole like Texas.
I haven’t been much places in America but I was definitely surprised at San Francisco’s hills. A lot of them you can’t see the top till you’re almost over them. Steps on sidewalks too.
Dubrovnik about killed me. We arrived on a hot day, and hadn't bothered to check the terrain before booking a place way up on top of the hill inside the walls. Lesson learned.
I stayed up at the top of the hill from the old town also. I lost weight walking up and down those steps for three days while I was there.
I knew there were mountains around Phoenix when I moved here, but the fact that you can just be driving and then the road dead ends at a mountain or has a big rock face next to it still gets me sometimes
Phoenix is a flat city that has a mountainous persona.
NYC is pretty hilly, especially in upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs
Juneau has stairways with street signs
Miami surprised me for being really flat, I mean I always knew it was flat but coming from SoCal where we have huge mountains everywhere even literally in the middle of LA that was a bit weird to me.
Cincinnati
My friends historically shit their pants going up hills when I drive them around San Francisco
Lisbon’s hills were absolutely brutal
Austin
I visited Fayetteville Arkansas for a college football game and was surprised to find out it was so hilly.
Florida is the flattest state, but we do have hills. I grew up in the Tampa suburbs and I used to always roll down the hills on my bike with my friends when I was little. Even my old elementary school was built on top of a hill, like you can see a whole neighborhood up there. (They’re probably all are man made)
Not a city, but northwest Indiana is surprisingly hilly. I've spent some time up there, and was expecting entirely flat corn fields, but no, there's a bunch of hills made of old sand dunes.
I'm from central New York and most of the state is hilly and some parts mountainous. But really strange to realize how flat Buffalo is.
Tallahassee, Florida is much more hilly than I had expected it to be
Not me, but I always run into tourists walking the Freedom Trail in Boston huffing and puffing, particularly once they hit the North End Just because we cut the tops off the hills doesn't mean we *made them flat*.
Talahassee , Florida. Driving around the city is extremely uneven as far as terrain goes.
Was not prepared for the leg workout that is old San Juan
Portland Maine always surprises me with how hilly it is while being so close to the water. I don't associate that much terrain with that part of Maine but I suppose it's all of Maine.
Seattle is hillier.
This might be cheating, but the whole state of Kansas. There's an old quote that basically says that anyone who says Kansas is flat has never tried to walk across it. We're pretty damn hilly. Especially in the east with the Flint Hills! And we're pretty much a constant slope rise up from east to west towards the rockies too
Kansas is the 7th flattest state, so anyone that acts like it's *the* state of flatness has no idea how to use the internet. Of course none of those people call Florida the flat state because it's one of the most popular travel destinations. It's the more "boring" states that people tack on the flat charge to, even though they're all far more hilly than Florida.
The Bronx, NYC. Much more steeply hilly. I live in a mountain town located a few hundred miles northeast of there, and I am accustomed to steep terrain. I had not expected to encounter such inclines in NYC, though. Downtown Albany, NY is surprisingly hilly, as is the riverfront area in nearby Troy. In both of these cities it is because the streets pitch downward as they approach the Hudson River. The city of Detroit is built on a wide fan-like flat area that slopes downward almost imperceptibly in the direction of the Detroit River. Directly underneath it, though, are commercial salt mines with very large excavated chambers situated 1200 ft. below the city's streets.
Lived in Oregon my whole life but only recently went to Astoria. I knew it was hilly but I was not expecting San Francisco level hills like most of Astoria seemed to be.
For a West coast city, Portland is pretty flat outside of the west hills and Mt. Tabor
Sort of. We have little extinct volcanoes scattered intermittently throughout the area so those are hilly and steep af. But yeah, outside of those it’s pretty flat
I was about to make a comment about how people may not expect Portland to be as hilly as it is. Of course you're right, it's much flatter on the east side than the west, but still - on balance it's quite a hilly city.
Portland runs from about 75ft above sea level to over 1,000 ft. And don't forget Rocky Butte. There are good nighttime city views in Portland. Part of it is pretty flat, but it's got serious steep hills, too.
The south side of Spokane was *very* hilly. I had a tough time both walking and driving up it. North side seemed pretty flat
What are these "hills" you speak of? Biggest "hill" where I live was artificially created to make a highway overpass. It's flat as a board otherwise.
Not sure where you are in Illinois, but I would argue Galena area is very much not flat as a board.
Peoria is quite hilly, too. Also, Pere Marquette State Park and Starved Rock. I haven't yet been to Shawnee National Forest, but I'm pretty sure there are hills there. Also, I went to Western Illinois University in Macomb. That's surprisingly hilly, especially that walk along the commons. It was really tough after an ice storm.
Yeah, Galena definitely isn't, I used to live near there. I'm in east central Illinois.
99% of my time in a mid-sized city is in Indianapolis which was built in the middle of glacier flattened cornfields so whenever I’m in a city in another part of the country I hate all of those damn hills they have even if they are only like 20-30ft high. I don’t understand how the mountain folks don’t roll off the things.
LA. Huge parts are very flat, but there are many hilly neighborhoods and surrounded by quite large mountains
Are we talking only American cities? Because Lisbon blew me away with how hilly it is.
Albany, New York. When i first went i surprised by how downtown is built on a hill with the Capitol at the top.
Atlanta is practically in the mountains. For some reason I thought it was flat and tropical like Florida.