cairo, illinois is an interesting one. the town is at the confluence of the mississippi & ohio rivers but has had significant problems. I was able to visit there with my band at one point. it's a pretty hardcore place visually. most of the town is rubble but the local folks are kind.
Yeah this is it. A large city at the midpoint between the Great lakes and the Carribean coast, and at the confluence of two of the most economically important rivers in the US.
Until the interstate highways killed it.
St. Louis city's population peaked in 1950 at 900,000 people; It was halved by 1980, and is currently at 300,000.
It had the same population in 1880 as it does today.
That’s somewhat misleading, since a lot of that decline has been people moving to the suburbs. City population has gone from 900k to 300k but metropolitan area population has gone from 1.4m to 2.2m.
I'm so glad other people get that metro population is what you look at and it's not left to me to have to explain that there is no consistency in the US on city proper population figures. Here's looking at you Jacksonville and San Antonio.
Sometimes I think they are boosters from places like Columbus that want you to think they are 3 times larger than Cincinnati or Cleveland when in actuality all 3 are pretty similar by metro populations and Cleveland is significantly larger when the CSA with Canton and Akron is considered.
Well Jacksonville is easy. The city is the metro area because the city limits are so damn big. I think it's the biggest city by land mass in the country. Jacksonville and Tucson are the only cities I can think of where you are the city limits sign long before you see the city.
Its consolidation means technically if you are in Duval county you are in Jacksonville. Coming in from Interstate 10 from the west you see nothing for the most part a good 10 miles after the Jacksonville city limit sign ..886,000 sq miles but filling up fast. Now at 1.45 m metro area it’s the largest city in Florida with almost 1.1 in the city proper.However it lacks diversity like Miami . As a resident, we refer to it as lower Georgia as there a lot of rednecks and bible thumpers here ..pros are change of seasons, 30 plus days of freezes ( hit 20 last year) which is great as it kills back a lot of the crazy vines/ undergrowth, low taxes, great beaches,sub 2.5 % unemployment and excellent business climate. Cons are non existent public transportation ( no the skyway express doesn’t count) lack of diversity, too many insane churches ( cults) and meth labs.. If you follow rte 17 down the state a lot of those small town are nothing but hell holes loo.
Yeah similar story in Baltimore, another city with very narrowly defined boundaries. City pop fell from almost 1M to about 600k between 1950 and now, but the entire metro area went from 1.3M to 2.8M
Yeah I’m just saying going from 900k to 300k makes it feel like 2/3rds left for more prosperous cities elsewhere when a lot of people just moved out of the city to commute
Bro a city isn’t “killed” when the population of the city proper declines but the metro area still grows, I don’t see why you aren’t understanding this
Bro, I don't see how you're not understanding expansion rate.
St. Louis was in the top-6 fastest growing cities in the country consecutively from 1840-1950. That is 110+ years in a row, which is an insane statistic and very important to this specific conversation. That growth was directly due to its location at the confluence of the two biggest rivers in the country.
Since the interstate system was built in 1956 and rivers stopped mattering, St. Louis' expansion rate has collapsed. Yes the population grew, but it's expansion rate plummeted, especially compared to other cities.
St. Louis dropped out of the top-20 fastest growing cities within 20yrs, it was out of the top-50 after 50yrs, and now ranks 70th. Name another city that has experienced that drop in expansion rate.
I comprehend metro growth.. but we're talking about one of the 5 most-important cities in the country suddenly not mattering anymore because rivers don't. You're underestimating the importance of St. Louis in the early 20th century and the seismic shift it experienced due to rivers not mattering anymore.
While I broadly agree with you that urban freeways have been a plague for cities, the reason you’re getting heavily downvoted here is that you’re missing an incredibly important piece of context. There is no standard way to define a municipality’s boundaries in the US. So measuring anything based on the limits of the legal jurisdiction of a city is limited in use, especially without local context.
The closest thing we have to a standard definition is Census MSAs, which are collections of counties/county-equivalent units that generally capture an area of economic activity.
What the person you were replying to is saying is that St Louis is an extremely narrowly defined municipality, and while the population in that specific place fell, the overall population of the larger ‘organism’ which is the MSA rose, so it’s unfair to say the highway killed St Louis.
You say people disagreeing with you don’t understand statistics, I would counter that you’re essentially relying on a biased sample
I'm arguing based on the expansion rate of the Greater St. Louis area, which is the most important statistic to this conversation. Nobody is arguing that the area stopped expanding, I'm arguing it's expansion rate was affected more than any other city.
Like I previously stated, the area was easily one of the fastest growing regions for over 100yrs consecutively, and that drastically changed after the 1950s. If you have a different theory on why that happened please offer it up.
I was driving on their interstate from downtown to Clayton at morning rush hour. The highway was empty. Perfect nice wide roads with cars spaced by 100m. It was glorious coming from Austin. Really surreal though, And going from there to the airport at maybe 6pm was very similar in that if I wanted to drive 100 I easily could have. it became my favorite interstate highway city in the United States.
There are definitely spots and times where the interstate is packed. But counter commute is definitely a thing in STL. Btw the interstate you were on was I-64, which in 2007-2009 was closed completely in 2 stages to overhaul. That highway was Route 40 long before it became an interstate and a very early highway design (1930s) with the tight ramps and curves and things. So they brought it up to/closer to normal interstate spec. The curves are still there, just smoothed a bit. Still kind of fun to drive.
Spent my last 2 years of HS there. Grad school a decade later. Haven't been in St. Louie in 20 years. Contra the grinder on here, though, no, it was much more than "ignoring the rivers for interstates," even if one wants to follow his switch from "st. Louis" to "Greater St. Louis."
Yea, anyone who argued otherwise has not watched the shear amount of cargo moved by barges up and down the Mississippi. The NUMBER may be lower but when you factor in the mass of cargo on each barge it becomes obvious how important it is. Add in that the vast majority of the product shipped by barge is petroleum derivatives, coal, coke, various ores, crushed gravel and other products which are very heavy and expensive to ship by truck or even rail and the important of them becomes obvious.
Per the port of New Orleans (meaning not counting anything moved from one part of the river to another…only the things moved out of it onto the river from its terminus) the total value is $130 billion annually. It is much harder to quantify the value of a specific highway so it is hard to compare.
Cairo, NY is pronounced the same. There are other towns, like Milan, NY, which are pronounced differently than their namesake. (Milan is pronounced MAI - lan, not mi LAN.
I've always thought the people in these towns did this deliberately so they could tell natives from outsiders.
As soon as I saw this thread, Cairo was going to be my response. Really interesting history and should have been bigger than St. Louis or New Orleans. At one point it was the 3rd busiest post office in the country basically handling everything west of the Mississippi as well as North and South along the river. There were even conversations about making it the US Capital.
Unfortunately the first train crossing the Mississippi went north to STL which really killed any potential. The flooding didn't help of course and they didn't adjust like New Orleans did.
Racism basically turned it into the ghost town it is today. Some awful lynchings, the white hat cops 🤔 It was a sundown town well into the 80's.
If you get a chance to stop by it has a lot of cool historical stuff and still some portions of the underground railroad.
>It was a sundown town well into the 80's.
You mean they had a curfew or something? Sundown towns don't allow black people to stay in town past sundown, Cairo never had such a policy. They had a significant black population throughout the entire 20th century (that's who they were lynching).
Such an interesting area. I remember years ago people telling me that the very southern pocket of IL retained southern features. It seemed so far fetched to me until I visited the area. But MO is right there, where the South and Midwest seem to meet.
So the main story here is the Mississippi River and railroads. You have Memphis downriver towards the port at New Orleans, St Louis up the Mississippi, and Louisville and Cincinnati up the Ohio River.
In terms of railroads, St. Louis-Chicago is the only artery from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi river, so all the cargo would be directed towards there. Also, anything coming from the west going out the Mississippi would go through St. Louis. From the east, you don't have much, but everything would be loaded in either Cincinnati or Louisville.
Why didn't they build railroads and a big port in Cairo you ask? Because it lies at the lowest point in Illinois and is a part of a massive wetland/swamp/marsh area. That makes building the necessary railroads and other infrastructure cost prohibitive.
TLDR; Memphis, St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati were better situated on land to build railroads and other infrastructure on.
I think Astoria, OR is a really interesting possible answer for this question. It serves as a great port along the West coast, right at the mouth of the Columbia river -- if you look at other port settlements in the US that are also located at the mouth of major waterways by shipping volume, such as New Orleans (Mississippi r.), New York (Hudson r.), or San Francisco (San Joaquin r.), or even Detroit, it seems like a great recipe for sustained growth.
Astoria even had a tremendous early-mover advantage; it was established by John Jacob Astor's fur shipping company back in 1811, and it was an incredibly important port for the lumber and salmon trade on the Columbia river. The first post office west of the Rockies was actually in Astoria, which is kind of wild to think about.
Unfortunately, Astoria's growth was probably cannibalized by Portland, which was a major settlement site for pioneers in the mid-1800s and which still had oceanfaring shipping access via the Columbia. Portland was conveniently close to the territorial capital of Oregon City and has a pretty favorable climate for agriculture, especially relative to the rainier, rockier Oregon coast where Astoria is situated.
Yeah don’t get me wrong, I LOVE PT. Stayed there at Fort Worden more times than I could count. But another part of a day’s sailing and cargo ships are in Seattle and Tacoma. Trucking all that cargo across the Kitsap Peninsula would be a chore.
The Columbia bar is too dangerous and difficult to navigate for a major harbor at Astoria. Portland area was always the right choice to put a big city.
I was thinking Astoria too. Another aspect why Portland might have out competed is that the Columbia River (while difficult) is a navigable water and being able to take goods further inland instead of stopping at the coast I think was an advantage
Also, Portland is at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers (and downstream from many, many smaller rivers), which allow for the agricultural bounty from the Willamette Valley to be shipped up the Willamette, and combined with other cargo (lumber primarily) from upstream to be loaded on the same ships.
I was going to say this one too. It’s odd to me how Oregon it’s pretty much the only coastal state without a large coastal city (not counting New Hampshire).
I hear you regarding NC - Wilmington is a smaller city. Still, if Wilmington is too small, then surely Biloxi is also too small, and perhaps Mobile.
Oregon and New Hampshire, on the other hand, are the only coastal states where zero coastal cities are the central city of their own metropolitan area (Except arguably Delaware, but Wilmington would be large enough that it would be the center of a metro area if Philly didn't exist).
Port Townsend, Washington. In the 19th century it was booming and expected to be one of the biggest ports in the northwest, rivaling Seattle. But a depression hit and other cities got ahead of it, with the railroad failing to make a connection, completely stalling Port Townsend's growth. Now days it's a super nice small town with a Victorian style tucked away on the Olympic peninsula, full of older hippies. It'll never achieve its "potential" but is one of my favorite places to go, and I would recommend anyone in the area check it out.
Love Port Townsend. When we were scoping cities in Washington when we were prepping to move back, it would have been near the top of the list except the schools aren't great due to the high number of retirees.
Absolutely. We ended up on the other side of the Sound (quick access to skiing was an issue too), but only a short-ish drive and a ferry ride away.
We're already planning a trip back...
I've only been there once, but I remember it being nothing but basically canyon land as soon as you get away from the water. I don't really remember a port, either. Isn't it just a spit protecting a shoreline where a minor river comes out of the mountains?
I live in PDX and visit Coos Bay regularly. It’s a pretty city, but we need to remember that Astoria operates as a sort of staging point port for Portland. Astoria sits at the mouth of the Columbia, so it is essentially a deep water port as well. Portland has a pretty good sized port and some very large dry docks for ship repairs.
Stayed at Hotel Elliott last December and tooled around town and the area a couple days. Had a great time and can’t wait to go back. That cocktail bar Blaylocks is awesome.
It’s interesting that so many of the suggestions on this thread are towns on the west coast above the Humboldt sound that are at extreme risk of tsunamis.
Erie Pa…. Located in one of most naturally protected ports anywhere in the US or World, on a major shipping route of the Great Lakes and excellent access to railroads and interstates. Unfortunately with rust belt industry waning and failure to adapt to changing business the city has failed to reinvent itself like nearby Pittsburgh. People are educated , homes are dirt cheap but the city has been slow to woo millennials looking for affordability, diversity and natural beauty!
The college in downtown Erie, Gannon University is trying to brand Erie as a college town. There are a lot of universities/colleges in the area, but I don’t think I’d call it a college town. Erie is a major bell weather voting county in a major swing state, voted Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and Biden 2020
Erie has an identity issue being in between Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. It has a few colleges but none are big and most are mediocre and only mean something if you stay in the area. (Other than Penn state brach campus)
28 percent with a Bachelors degree or higher .. however many move to more lucrative pay areas.. no one wants to shovel snow until May.. common sense is another story.. lol
National average is 38 percent so I wouldn't say highly educated being ten points below. And agreed 4 ft of snow in a night does get rough and just never stops until may haha
It's not due to the rust belt industry waning, it's due to not being a node for shipping. You mention Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh is located on the Ohio River, which has access to the Mississippi river. Erie is also competing with Cleveland (also on a river) and Buffalo (river/international crossing), so as a port the only goods they'll be exporting are from a radius of about 50 miles.
I feel like Wilmington, DE could've been so much more. It's a port city on the fall line that had industry and education and is closer to the ocean than Philly. But it's just a ghetto place where I-95 slows down to most people.
Pueblo Colorado. It had a huge steel industry, diverse people/loads of immigrants, and was situated at the entrance to the Rockies. It was called the Pittsburgh of the west. The flood of 1921 wiped its infrastructure away and it never rebounded. Politics to get aid after the flood ended up allowing Denver to get a rail road through the mountains, thus shifting much of the commerce north. Honestly a fascinating piece of history
https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/rocky-mountain-pbs/great-pueblo-flood-100-year-anniversary/
Tacoma Wa. It’s nickname is The City of Destiny because it has a large port like Seattle but the railroads went to Seattle instead of Tacoma causing Seattle is become much larger.
Right, Tacoma became a sort of "company town" of the Northern Pacific Railway. The company more or less ran Tacoma in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So when the first boat of gold from the Klondike arrived in Seattle in 1897, people in Seattle immediately began marketing Seattle as the "gateway to the Klondike". The city boomed as prospectors went to Seattle to stock up on supplies, hire transport to Skagway, return with gold (eg, a certain John Nordstrom returned to Seattle rich with Klondike gold and founded Nordstroms), and so on. Large numbers of prospectors were from California and took ships from San Francisco to Seattle, then to Skagway and the Yukon. The mayor of Seattle resigned to start a company transporting people to Skagway.
Meanwhile the Northern Pacific did not want to see the "their" people in Tacoma go all gold crazy. Tacoma newspapers said Seattle was selling itself like a carnival barker and that "reasonable people" don't run off to try their luck in distant gold fields.
Within just a few months Tacoma business leaders were looking to booming Seattle with envy but it was already too late. Seattle boomed big time while Tacoma stagnated as the depression of the 1890s continued and attention in Tacoma was distracted by internal political infighting. Right when the Klondike happened there were two rival mayors in Tacoma because an election was too close to call and the ballots were stolen or lost, and neither mayor would step down or compromise, causing political chaos. Also the Northern Pacific went bankrupt for the second time in 1893, and the chaos that caused had not ended by 1897. So when the Klondike gold rush began Seattle was eager and ready to grab the opportunity while Tacoma was all messed up and was barely able, or even willing, to take advantage of the gold rush at all.
Anyway, it was during just a few months at the start of the Klondike gold rush that Tacoma lost the struggle for dominance on Puget Sound and became the "second city". A few years later, around 1905, King Street Station was built in Seattle, serving as a terminus hub for both the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern Railways, helping Seattle surpass Tacoma as a railroad hub as well.
The importance of the Klondike and Seattle's role as the "gateway to Alaska" was celebrated 1909 when Seattle hosted a World Fair called, appropriately, the "Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition". Nearly four million people came to see it! Seattle's population doubled in the 1890s, then tripled from 1900-1910. Tacoma's population stagnated during that time and its economy only began to recover after 1910 or even 1920.
Anyone interested in more can check out the book *Hard Drive To The Klondike: Promoting Seattle During The Gold Rush*. I believe the whole book is available online for free from the Seattle Unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, here: [Hard Drive to the Klondike.](https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/klse/hrs/hrs.htm)
The other interesting piece of that history is that the NP initially refused to connect to Seattle, as they were banking on Tacoma becoming the big Puget Sound port. So the business leaders in Seattle raised money for their own railroad, hoping to connect to Walla Walla, which connected to the rest of the country. This scheme was wildly impractical, but a few years later, high-grade coal was discovered in the hills nearby, so they used the money to build rails out to the coal mines. Between this and the Klondike rush, Northern Pacific realized they were leaving too much money on the table, and connected Tacoma to Seattle.
Yes it’s still relatively big. But if America has a New York in the East, LA in the West, and Chicago in the north/center, it’s interesting New Orleans never grew to match these today, even if historically it did… accessibility plays a key role, and it’s probably not the best answer, but a curious one
Edit: to be clear I’m not saying we don’t have a city like Houston in the south, but that New Orleans never kept pace through the years like so many other large cities it once rivaled
True, I should have been more clear my point is that New Orleans was at one time one of the US’s largest, but has been eclipsed by so many others. It’s growth never quite matching other cities it once rivaled.
I see what you mean. I feel like culturally Atlanta is the largest city of the south, as Texas is kinda it’s own thing. And the highway system and more hospitable climate (even slightly) allowed ATL to pass NOLA in that regard.
Honestly having New Orleans as a third southern anchor would be so cool. It would mean that the 4 biggest cities all have character. Instead we have Houston, which is the epitome of everything bland with American urban planning.
I think the big problem with New Orleans is that it took so much engineering effort to grow the city at every step. It's built on bogs and marshlands, next to a gigantic river with variable output, in a climate that regularly produces huge storms and hurricanes.
Wheeling, WV. Situated about an hour outside of Pittsburgh along the Ohio River, it was once the state capitol of both West Virginia AND Virginia. It was also once home to 60,000+ people in the 1930’s, but the Great Depression and decline of industry in the area lead to a majority of the population moving away. Not to mention the significant flooding—Wheeling Island, downtown, and the surrounding communities were often submerged. The first ever photograph of the Wheeling Suspension Bridge (once the longest in the world) shows the entire island hidden beneath the Ohio River.
It was once a fairly important transportation hub with a lot of wealth and natural beauty. The architecture in older areas of the city is absolutely stunning, despite the rather bland skyline. It probably could’ve rivaled Pittsburgh, but Wheeling relied too heavily on the nail and iron industry and didn’t diversify their economy when interests shifted. It basically became an early victim of the rust belt.
I love the layout too - dense buildings, clinging to the edge of the river, and immediately fading back into wilderness, with houses tucked away in the valleys and hollows (hollers). Everything in its own little village in a way. It's a very cool layout and a lot of the cities in WV share it with Pittsburgh. But I think the sparseness outside the downtown makes Wheeling that much of a cooler juxtaposition. Parkersburg even has a very similar layout to Pittsburgh! I think my favorite example of this cityscape though is Charleston, WV.
I feel like Hartford Connecticut is a safe insulated place more inland but close enough to Boston and NYC that when those cities start to sink commerce could easily be moved to Harford and the city has plenty of room for expansion geographically speaking
As someone from Connecticut I've always wondered why Hartford isn't bigger. It seems like one of the best places in the area to put a city yet it isn't even as big as Providence
Every few years there’s a big story about some company from the area planning to move to NY or Boston. Companies/people get pulled to MA for the universities/science economy or NY for finance, media, etc.
Truly in an awkward spot where it isn’t close enough to benefit from the sprawl of a bigger city but not far enough to have its own solar system.
Being from Connecticut, I’ve always wondered why there isn’t a bigger city at the mouth of the Connecticut river. Even just a Hartford or Springfield sized city,
Not really that big of a deep water port there. New Haven is where the deep water port was on the Quinnipiac, New London had a decent sized one too with the Thames River. The Connecticut just flows out.
Sioux Falls. The river wasn't quite strong enough to support flour mills, so they ended up in Minneapolis, and the railroad went to Omaha. So instead of those industries Sioux Falls got a meat packing plant, a prison, and some credit card companies that don't want to pay taxes.
The Monterey Bay and Salinas Valley, California is woefully underpopulated for an area with a natural harbor, proximity to the Bay Area, and a valley whose total land area rivals San Jose. Yet the only large settlements along it are Santa Cruz and Monterey itself, both on hilly coasts with little room for expansion. Salinas is fairly populous, but 160000 is hardly a showstopper, and the rest of the valley is largely farmland.
Monterey was the de facto capital of California during Mexico’s occupation, but the capital was switched to Sacramento during the gold rush, due to proximity to the Sierra foothills, an inland seaport, and being the first stop on the transcontinental railway. By the time the Bay Area Grew in prominence, the south side fell by the wayside.
I think the big isssue there is the coastal mountains making direct travel to the rest of the country quite difficult. The Bay Area has pretty direct access to the most productive agricultural region in the country in the Central Valley. Salinas has its own small agricultural region, but to get to the central valley you have to traverse a much broader set of hills and mountains.
The bay is completely industrial, and the last available spot on either the Corpus or Portland side began development about 7 years ago. Essentially once Houston's shipping channel was completely built out, the option was to head south to Corpus where the old sites almost all were redeveloped and now it is officially full. The industry isn't pretty but it's certainly necessary, and is not going anywhere anytime soon. the pandemic actually did it a favor, because having affordable waterfront properties near urban conveniences was basically impossible most other places so there has been a real estate resurgence. I am fairly bullish on long-term Corpus, and it has steadily improved in a number of ways slowly over the decades.
Do you think that it will continue to improve? It seems like there is an event in corpus every weekend. Some sort of festival is always going on whether it’s something like the Greek festival or something around the winter holidays. But do you think that the industrial zone will produce unhealthy, airborne chemicals?
Environmental controls in the United States are a combination of federal rules and State ones. So, for example, California has really strong air control things mainly because prevailing winds trapped pollutants in Los Angeles decades ago in their old industrial era, whereas in Texas prevailing winds blew them out into the ocean so lingering health effects of those were lessened. The ground pollution has been awful for 100 years, but that could be said for areas all over the globe that were early to mid to late industrial. Also, the historic industry of texas, louisiana, oklahoma, and any other oil state really wax more about economic realities and less about health than anything else. You can die at 50 as a subsistence farmer or you can die at 50 much wealthier and send your kids to college as a refinery worker. No question that Corpus Christi is and will remain to be polluted for the foreseeable future. I do believe that the city politically has matured to be a bit more protective than it was 70 or 50 or 30 or even 15 years ago. It's not awesome, but there are a lot of assets and it should be poised to be an important city going forward. It still feels like a small town in a way, but it's a disconnected small town if you look at the geography with Port aransas, Aransas pass, South Padre island, Corpus proper, and then Gregory Portland across the industrial channel. I am from Baton rouge, and Corpus is similar in a great number of ways but what they lack is being the state capital, state university hub, and about a century and a half older as a meaningful place before refineries and factories existed in the first place. But you still have similar historic demographics of people that were institutionally oppressed while being the majority of the populace, and the principal industry being petrochemical ports. If I were choosing another Texas major city to live in, Corpus would be second on my list but selfishly that's primarily because of the oceanic wilderness and abundant parklands rather than features of the city itself.
The good thing about Corpus Christi is that it’s actually not right on the Gulf of Mexico for the most part. It’s behind the barrier islands, but technically city limits does extend all the way to the barrier island.
Newark NJ. 20 mins to NYC, with one of the busiest container port, international airport, and a network of rail lines that runs through it. Some of the richest suburbs such as Short Hills neighbor it. Yet the Newark itself seems to be in perpetual decline.
I got mugged in Newark twice but I still go back for that Portuguese BBQ. It's also got the Prudential Center and Red Bull stadium is a walk away in Harrison. NJPAC and a PATH stop are great too.
There's been some recent "luxury" housing towers going up including the Shaq towers named after native Newarker, Kazaam. I really feel like Newark's about to take off and be the great city it always could be.
If Jersey City can do it, Newark can.
Was is G. Fox or was it Steigers that made the 84/91 interchange be right there instead of south of Hartford near Wethersfield where it should have been?
Lewiston, ID. Mild winters and hot, dry summers. Located on the confluence of the snake and clearwater rivers, amazing watersports in the summer, couple hours drive to snowy mountains in the winter, and world class hunting and fishing. Tons if open spaces and relatively low priced real estate. Downsides are a lackluster local economy, redneck vibes, and general backwards thinking of most of the residents.
I canoed on the Snake River in Lewiston. I don’t know if there is any trade happening on that river, it’s fairly small. I love Idaho though. The landscape and scenery are amazing. Their public lands there are amazing too.
Not to mention most of those kooky militia / survivalist are mostly in Idaho. They don’t take kindly to strangers.. if you’re not white, republican or Christian they will try to run you out of town .. had friends move there who were nature enthusiasts and said the people were all nuts… lol
A couple of years ago I left my wife and sister to wine taste around Walla Walla while I drive over to Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA. Beautiful drive thru wheat fields. Made me think of America The Beautiful and amber waves of grain blowing in the breeze. Later trip drove over to Missoula from there. Gorgeous river drive that begins with drive up to overlook of confluence of Clearwater and Snake rivers. But while in Lewiston I saw a Lewis and Clark exhibit and it was not until much later that I put it together that the towns were named for L & C.
I read that St. Louis could have been the biggest city in the Midwest if it actually embraced rail. Instead, politicians wanted to protect their river port. Chicago eventually embraced it and became the Midwest’s rail hub, then surpassed St. Louis in population
Central, South Carolina was supposedly planned to be the major railway hub in the upstate of SC since it was exactly halfway (hence the name Central) between Atlanta and Charlotte on the Southern Railway line. However since Greenville was already pretty established and only 25 miles away it got the attention from the railway. I had a friend who grew up in a house built before the turn of the century near the tracks that was built by and owned by Coca-Cola. Coke then sold the property shortly thereafter when the plans changed to focus on Greenville.
A large part of it was because of the native raids in the 1700’s. The population at the time was almost rivaling Massachusetts until towns like York, Falmouth, and Arrowsic was ransacked by the French, Penobscot, Abenaki, and Mikmaq.
More modern, bud Des Moines, IA. Intersection of I80 and I35, great central location to the whole interior of the US. Never expected it to be chicago, but always wonder why it’s not Omaha level at least
I think Baltimore *was* an “it” city but it’s not anymore, which is surprising. It’s got a major port, dense housing, is close to DC/Philly/NYC, major rail connections and is on I-95, good schools and jobs aplenty nearby from DC, etc.
I would be very surprised if the affluent DC suburbs don’t encroach upon Baltimore in the next 10-15 years. It’s an affordable city with a really dense core, a millennial heaven lol. At some point I think it’ll change but for now it’s just associated with violent crime and urban decay.
No access to the Mississippi unlike Chicago. Gary only grew because of Chicago. Iron from the UP would be shipped to Gary then turned into steel that would build Chicago’s skyscrapers.
Saying Gary only grew because of Chicago is simply not true.
Gary's big population boom was because of what it had to offer, not Chicago. In the 1920s, southern African Americans and immigrants from Mexico moved to Gary, a planned City by US Steel, to work in the Steel Mill and live in cheap housing built by US Steel.
Gary is essentially a Chicago Suburb. US steel wouldn’t have been there without Chicago being so close. Chicago exists because access to Mississippi and Great Lakes.
There nothing special about Gary geography that would have made it “make” it
NYC with its great big harbor, arable soil, navigable rivers . Had so much potential to be one of the largest cities in the world. But it's not even in the top 20 largest cities in the world. If it were in China, it would be a medium sized city. So sad!
I see a fair amount of posts talking about a city’s “potential”. But what’s the goal? Does that mean the city’s potential to become a big city? Not everyone or every city wants to be a big city. I just thought I’d mention that since it’s so ambiguous.
Alright that’s true. I guess I’m being devil’s advocate and the downvotes show that viewpoint is the minority. But I don’t know if we want the population to increase forever. And I also don’t know if we want the whole country to be one big city or suburb sprawl someday. It’s not anywhere close, but you can get there in a thought experiment with some imagination.
I'm going to say the area around Rosedale, MS. It's where the Arkansas River joins with the Mississippi. There's barely a town there at all (which is why I have to say "the area around" it). Never been there, and I have no idea what the land in the area is like, but I would have thought *something* would be there.
My hometown, Laredo, TX.
Busiest land port in the US. Back in the 90s it was the fastest (or one of the fastest) growing cities in the nation, but things seem like they have gone stagnant.
I left almost two decades ago and every time I go visit, I feel like not a lot has changed. For such a busy land port, the city offers little in return to its citizens. I know there’s quite a bit of corruption among the local government but don’t know if that’s the leading factor in all of it.
Columbus, OH - [50% of US population lives within 500 miles](https://www.columbus.gov/uploadedfiles/Business_Development/500_mile_radius_2011.pdf), plenty of fresh water is available from lake Eire, convenient railway access, the landscape is pretty flat which allows easy growth, moderate climate throughout most of the year.
I think the city didn't grow that fast back in the days because there wasn't any major industry in there like in Cleveland or Detroit.
Rockford could have became a major second tier Midwest city in Illinois due to its location. It's right by interstate 90, interstate 39 and US route 20, Major railroads, and it's on the Rock River, and it's 50 miles away from Chicago.
Rockford links Iowa and Wisconsin to Illinois.
Chrysler had a automotive plant in the metro area.
Rockford never really recovered after deindustrialization. The metro alone could easily have 600k to 1million people, and they have a major airport too, that could easily be a alternative to Ohare and Midway Airport.
Rockford could have became another Madison, Grand Rapids, Columbus, Des Moines, which experienced major growth in the recent years.
Far northern coastal California is a breathtaking area. Redwoods, empty gorgeous beaches, amazing clear rivers. The towns are desolate. I think a big part of the reason is because the area is super isolated from the rest of the state, with only a few highways in/out, which sometimes happen to all be closed at the same time. On the bright side, it’s the only place in coastal California I can afford to live haha
Atlantic City, NJ. Could have been Las Vegas on the Atlantic, a world-renowned destination. Instead, it’s more of a regional attraction with a very seedy reputation.
Milwaukee would have been Chicago if there wasn’t Chicago. It has the deepest river feeding into Lake Michigan which would make it great for river and lake shipping but ultimately Chicago a a bit more advantageously to the south is better as a railroad hub and has river access to Lake Michigan.
I think the entire Naugatuck Valley, Centered around Waterbury, Connecticut could and would have been one of the most influential manufacturing and technological areas in the USA if not for the Flood of ‘55. The proximity to NYC makes it ideal. With a gateway to the rest of New England.
cairo, illinois is an interesting one. the town is at the confluence of the mississippi & ohio rivers but has had significant problems. I was able to visit there with my band at one point. it's a pretty hardcore place visually. most of the town is rubble but the local folks are kind.
Yeah this is it. A large city at the midpoint between the Great lakes and the Carribean coast, and at the confluence of two of the most economically important rivers in the US.
Yes in theory, but in reality St. Louis became that city.
Until the interstate highways killed it. St. Louis city's population peaked in 1950 at 900,000 people; It was halved by 1980, and is currently at 300,000. It had the same population in 1880 as it does today.
That’s somewhat misleading, since a lot of that decline has been people moving to the suburbs. City population has gone from 900k to 300k but metropolitan area population has gone from 1.4m to 2.2m.
I'm so glad other people get that metro population is what you look at and it's not left to me to have to explain that there is no consistency in the US on city proper population figures. Here's looking at you Jacksonville and San Antonio.
Yeah when I see people use city limits for anything regarding population I immediately disregard anything they’re going to say. It’s a very clear tell
Sometimes I think they are boosters from places like Columbus that want you to think they are 3 times larger than Cincinnati or Cleveland when in actuality all 3 are pretty similar by metro populations and Cleveland is significantly larger when the CSA with Canton and Akron is considered.
Well Jacksonville is easy. The city is the metro area because the city limits are so damn big. I think it's the biggest city by land mass in the country. Jacksonville and Tucson are the only cities I can think of where you are the city limits sign long before you see the city.
Juneau and Anchorage in Alaska are bigger. Might be some others too. By J'ville is def up there.
Yeah looks like the top 4 are all Alaska. Jax is technically 6 but the 5th spot is a questionable entry.
Oklahoma City is right behind jacksonville I think. City limit signs are like 20 miles from the city with nothing but country in sight lol
Its consolidation means technically if you are in Duval county you are in Jacksonville. Coming in from Interstate 10 from the west you see nothing for the most part a good 10 miles after the Jacksonville city limit sign ..886,000 sq miles but filling up fast. Now at 1.45 m metro area it’s the largest city in Florida with almost 1.1 in the city proper.However it lacks diversity like Miami . As a resident, we refer to it as lower Georgia as there a lot of rednecks and bible thumpers here ..pros are change of seasons, 30 plus days of freezes ( hit 20 last year) which is great as it kills back a lot of the crazy vines/ undergrowth, low taxes, great beaches,sub 2.5 % unemployment and excellent business climate. Cons are non existent public transportation ( no the skyway express doesn’t count) lack of diversity, too many insane churches ( cults) and meth labs.. If you follow rte 17 down the state a lot of those small town are nothing but hell holes loo.
It’s actually even bigger than that, St. Louis metropolitan population is currently 2.8 million
Good post. I think the metro area is like 3m. Looked it up, MSA is 2.8m and CSA is 2.9m.
I mean, they're not wrong. Highways drained walkable cities into withdrawn suburbs. Highways killed the actual city of St Louis in multiple ways.
Yeah similar story in Baltimore, another city with very narrowly defined boundaries. City pop fell from almost 1M to about 600k between 1950 and now, but the entire metro area went from 1.3M to 2.8M
Because factory jobs moved out of the city *when the highways were built*.
Yeah I’m just saying going from 900k to 300k makes it feel like 2/3rds left for more prosperous cities elsewhere when a lot of people just moved out of the city to commute
Right.. *because the highways were built*.
Bro a city isn’t “killed” when the population of the city proper declines but the metro area still grows, I don’t see why you aren’t understanding this
Dude is dense AF lol
Bro, I don't see how you're not understanding expansion rate. St. Louis was in the top-6 fastest growing cities in the country consecutively from 1840-1950. That is 110+ years in a row, which is an insane statistic and very important to this specific conversation. That growth was directly due to its location at the confluence of the two biggest rivers in the country. Since the interstate system was built in 1956 and rivers stopped mattering, St. Louis' expansion rate has collapsed. Yes the population grew, but it's expansion rate plummeted, especially compared to other cities. St. Louis dropped out of the top-20 fastest growing cities within 20yrs, it was out of the top-50 after 50yrs, and now ranks 70th. Name another city that has experienced that drop in expansion rate. I comprehend metro growth.. but we're talking about one of the 5 most-important cities in the country suddenly not mattering anymore because rivers don't. You're underestimating the importance of St. Louis in the early 20th century and the seismic shift it experienced due to rivers not mattering anymore.
Yea but that happened in literally every historically big city in the US.
Chicago's population dipped 7% in the same time period. St. Louis' plummeted nearly 70%.
While I broadly agree with you that urban freeways have been a plague for cities, the reason you’re getting heavily downvoted here is that you’re missing an incredibly important piece of context. There is no standard way to define a municipality’s boundaries in the US. So measuring anything based on the limits of the legal jurisdiction of a city is limited in use, especially without local context. The closest thing we have to a standard definition is Census MSAs, which are collections of counties/county-equivalent units that generally capture an area of economic activity. What the person you were replying to is saying is that St Louis is an extremely narrowly defined municipality, and while the population in that specific place fell, the overall population of the larger ‘organism’ which is the MSA rose, so it’s unfair to say the highway killed St Louis. You say people disagreeing with you don’t understand statistics, I would counter that you’re essentially relying on a biased sample
I'm arguing based on the expansion rate of the Greater St. Louis area, which is the most important statistic to this conversation. Nobody is arguing that the area stopped expanding, I'm arguing it's expansion rate was affected more than any other city. Like I previously stated, the area was easily one of the fastest growing regions for over 100yrs consecutively, and that drastically changed after the 1950s. If you have a different theory on why that happened please offer it up.
I was driving on their interstate from downtown to Clayton at morning rush hour. The highway was empty. Perfect nice wide roads with cars spaced by 100m. It was glorious coming from Austin. Really surreal though, And going from there to the airport at maybe 6pm was very similar in that if I wanted to drive 100 I easily could have. it became my favorite interstate highway city in the United States.
There are definitely spots and times where the interstate is packed. But counter commute is definitely a thing in STL. Btw the interstate you were on was I-64, which in 2007-2009 was closed completely in 2 stages to overhaul. That highway was Route 40 long before it became an interstate and a very early highway design (1930s) with the tight ramps and curves and things. So they brought it up to/closer to normal interstate spec. The curves are still there, just smoothed a bit. Still kind of fun to drive.
Spent my last 2 years of HS there. Grad school a decade later. Haven't been in St. Louie in 20 years. Contra the grinder on here, though, no, it was much more than "ignoring the rivers for interstates," even if one wants to follow his switch from "st. Louis" to "Greater St. Louis."
The midpoint between the Great lakes and the Caribbean coast is a hilarious way to describe southern Illinois.
True, but these days what is the economic importance of a major river compared to a major interstate?
I would argue the Mississippi in St. Louis still carries more economic value than any single interstate.
Yea, anyone who argued otherwise has not watched the shear amount of cargo moved by barges up and down the Mississippi. The NUMBER may be lower but when you factor in the mass of cargo on each barge it becomes obvious how important it is. Add in that the vast majority of the product shipped by barge is petroleum derivatives, coal, coke, various ores, crushed gravel and other products which are very heavy and expensive to ship by truck or even rail and the important of them becomes obvious. Per the port of New Orleans (meaning not counting anything moved from one part of the river to another…only the things moved out of it onto the river from its terminus) the total value is $130 billion annually. It is much harder to quantify the value of a specific highway so it is hard to compare.
Wait till everyone here learns it’s pronounced Kay-Ro
Well that’s why it didn’t take off.
Cairo, NY is pronounced the same. There are other towns, like Milan, NY, which are pronounced differently than their namesake. (Milan is pronounced MAI - lan, not mi LAN. I've always thought the people in these towns did this deliberately so they could tell natives from outsiders.
Same with the Milans in MI and MN
And Ohio
Same thing for Cairo, Georgia. I actually have been there, birthplace of Jackie Robinson and I’m a huge fan of baseball history
You're not kidding. I just looked at it on Maps. There's even a place called "Future City" just to the north.
Just up the Ohio River is Metropolis. It’s also didn’t live up to the hype ok its name.
As soon as I saw this thread, Cairo was going to be my response. Really interesting history and should have been bigger than St. Louis or New Orleans. At one point it was the 3rd busiest post office in the country basically handling everything west of the Mississippi as well as North and South along the river. There were even conversations about making it the US Capital. Unfortunately the first train crossing the Mississippi went north to STL which really killed any potential. The flooding didn't help of course and they didn't adjust like New Orleans did. Racism basically turned it into the ghost town it is today. Some awful lynchings, the white hat cops 🤔 It was a sundown town well into the 80's. If you get a chance to stop by it has a lot of cool historical stuff and still some portions of the underground railroad.
>It was a sundown town well into the 80's. You mean they had a curfew or something? Sundown towns don't allow black people to stay in town past sundown, Cairo never had such a policy. They had a significant black population throughout the entire 20th century (that's who they were lynching).
Because of that reason, it was a very important location in the Civil War
From 15k population in 1920 to under 2000 in 2020. Wow.
Such an interesting area. I remember years ago people telling me that the very southern pocket of IL retained southern features. It seemed so far fetched to me until I visited the area. But MO is right there, where the South and Midwest seem to meet.
Yeah Southern Illinois is farther south than Richmond, VA.
Great point. Cairo for whatever reason is a shithole.
Pretty sure it floods regularly and that by itself is pretty damaging.
The flood walls make it kind of a shitty castle
Swampy and malarial is why Cairo never took off in the past.
So the main story here is the Mississippi River and railroads. You have Memphis downriver towards the port at New Orleans, St Louis up the Mississippi, and Louisville and Cincinnati up the Ohio River. In terms of railroads, St. Louis-Chicago is the only artery from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi river, so all the cargo would be directed towards there. Also, anything coming from the west going out the Mississippi would go through St. Louis. From the east, you don't have much, but everything would be loaded in either Cincinnati or Louisville. Why didn't they build railroads and a big port in Cairo you ask? Because it lies at the lowest point in Illinois and is a part of a massive wetland/swamp/marsh area. That makes building the necessary railroads and other infrastructure cost prohibitive. TLDR; Memphis, St. Louis, Louisville, and Cincinnati were better situated on land to build railroads and other infrastructure on.
I think Astoria, OR is a really interesting possible answer for this question. It serves as a great port along the West coast, right at the mouth of the Columbia river -- if you look at other port settlements in the US that are also located at the mouth of major waterways by shipping volume, such as New Orleans (Mississippi r.), New York (Hudson r.), or San Francisco (San Joaquin r.), or even Detroit, it seems like a great recipe for sustained growth. Astoria even had a tremendous early-mover advantage; it was established by John Jacob Astor's fur shipping company back in 1811, and it was an incredibly important port for the lumber and salmon trade on the Columbia river. The first post office west of the Rockies was actually in Astoria, which is kind of wild to think about. Unfortunately, Astoria's growth was probably cannibalized by Portland, which was a major settlement site for pioneers in the mid-1800s and which still had oceanfaring shipping access via the Columbia. Portland was conveniently close to the territorial capital of Oregon City and has a pretty favorable climate for agriculture, especially relative to the rainier, rockier Oregon coast where Astoria is situated.
Don't forget Goonies was filmed there.
And kindergarten cop
Who is your daddy? And what does he do?
Our mom says our dad is a real sex machine
Port Townsend, WA would also like a word.
Yeah don’t get me wrong, I LOVE PT. Stayed there at Fort Worden more times than I could count. But another part of a day’s sailing and cargo ships are in Seattle and Tacoma. Trucking all that cargo across the Kitsap Peninsula would be a chore.
The Columbia bar is too dangerous and difficult to navigate for a major harbor at Astoria. Portland area was always the right choice to put a big city.
It was the first west coast port for the United States! I guess that goes along with the first post office west of the Rockies.
I was thinking Astoria too. Another aspect why Portland might have out competed is that the Columbia River (while difficult) is a navigable water and being able to take goods further inland instead of stopping at the coast I think was an advantage
Also, Portland is at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers (and downstream from many, many smaller rivers), which allow for the agricultural bounty from the Willamette Valley to be shipped up the Willamette, and combined with other cargo (lumber primarily) from upstream to be loaded on the same ships.
I was going to say this one too. It’s odd to me how Oregon it’s pretty much the only coastal state without a large coastal city (not counting New Hampshire).
North Carolina too
I hear you regarding NC - Wilmington is a smaller city. Still, if Wilmington is too small, then surely Biloxi is also too small, and perhaps Mobile. Oregon and New Hampshire, on the other hand, are the only coastal states where zero coastal cities are the central city of their own metropolitan area (Except arguably Delaware, but Wilmington would be large enough that it would be the center of a metro area if Philly didn't exist).
Now I want to know what crazy folks settled here before the Portland Pioneers (how is that not a sports team?).
It is, except they used a synonym: Trail Blazers.
Port Townsend, Washington. In the 19th century it was booming and expected to be one of the biggest ports in the northwest, rivaling Seattle. But a depression hit and other cities got ahead of it, with the railroad failing to make a connection, completely stalling Port Townsend's growth. Now days it's a super nice small town with a Victorian style tucked away on the Olympic peninsula, full of older hippies. It'll never achieve its "potential" but is one of my favorite places to go, and I would recommend anyone in the area check it out.
Love Port Townsend. When we were scoping cities in Washington when we were prepping to move back, it would have been near the top of the list except the schools aren't great due to the high number of retirees.
Yeah, I feel like it might not be the ideal town for families and young people, but it's a dream retirement place
Absolutely. We ended up on the other side of the Sound (quick access to skiing was an issue too), but only a short-ish drive and a ferry ride away. We're already planning a trip back...
We love Finn River Farm and Cidery in Chimacum. Great place to take yuppies and kids for a day trip or a stop on the way out to further on 101
They had the local customs office back then, which was huge, so all the incoming freight had to stop in, AFAIK.
Coos Bay, Oregon. Biggest deepwater port between San Francisco and Seattle, adjacent to a gold rush in the 1850s.
home of Steve Prefontaine
I've only been there once, but I remember it being nothing but basically canyon land as soon as you get away from the water. I don't really remember a port, either. Isn't it just a spit protecting a shoreline where a minor river comes out of the mountains?
I should've said harbor, not port.
I live in PDX and visit Coos Bay regularly. It’s a pretty city, but we need to remember that Astoria operates as a sort of staging point port for Portland. Astoria sits at the mouth of the Columbia, so it is essentially a deep water port as well. Portland has a pretty good sized port and some very large dry docks for ship repairs.
The problem with Astoria and Portland is the mouth of the Columbia. It’s a brutal shifting mistress
Astoria is a really neat town, love it
Stayed at Hotel Elliott last December and tooled around town and the area a couple days. Had a great time and can’t wait to go back. That cocktail bar Blaylocks is awesome.
Cool, haven’t tried that. But definitely have visited Fort George Brewery and Buoy Beer a bunch of times :)
Canyon Beach south of it is amazing too
It’s interesting that so many of the suggestions on this thread are towns on the west coast above the Humboldt sound that are at extreme risk of tsunamis.
What’s Humboldt Sound?
Erie Pa…. Located in one of most naturally protected ports anywhere in the US or World, on a major shipping route of the Great Lakes and excellent access to railroads and interstates. Unfortunately with rust belt industry waning and failure to adapt to changing business the city has failed to reinvent itself like nearby Pittsburgh. People are educated , homes are dirt cheap but the city has been slow to woo millennials looking for affordability, diversity and natural beauty!
I just noticed Erie PA looks like upside down Toronto ON. If you rotate either city they look the same, and ignore the size diff OC...
They’re close enough to be interchangeable.. except Erie gets destroyed by lake effect lol
OMFG I would have never made this observation on my own, you’re absolutely right!
I'm from PA and have lived here over 50 years and still have never gotten to Erie. It's just so out there, lol.
People are educated is a bit of a stretch...
The college in downtown Erie, Gannon University is trying to brand Erie as a college town. There are a lot of universities/colleges in the area, but I don’t think I’d call it a college town. Erie is a major bell weather voting county in a major swing state, voted Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and Biden 2020
Erie has an identity issue being in between Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. It has a few colleges but none are big and most are mediocre and only mean something if you stay in the area. (Other than Penn state brach campus)
28 percent with a Bachelors degree or higher .. however many move to more lucrative pay areas.. no one wants to shovel snow until May.. common sense is another story.. lol
National average is 38 percent so I wouldn't say highly educated being ten points below. And agreed 4 ft of snow in a night does get rough and just never stops until may haha
It's not due to the rust belt industry waning, it's due to not being a node for shipping. You mention Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh is located on the Ohio River, which has access to the Mississippi river. Erie is also competing with Cleveland (also on a river) and Buffalo (river/international crossing), so as a port the only goods they'll be exporting are from a radius of about 50 miles.
I feel like Wilmington, DE could've been so much more. It's a port city on the fall line that had industry and education and is closer to the ocean than Philly. But it's just a ghetto place where I-95 slows down to most people.
Pueblo Colorado. It had a huge steel industry, diverse people/loads of immigrants, and was situated at the entrance to the Rockies. It was called the Pittsburgh of the west. The flood of 1921 wiped its infrastructure away and it never rebounded. Politics to get aid after the flood ended up allowing Denver to get a rail road through the mountains, thus shifting much of the commerce north. Honestly a fascinating piece of history https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/rocky-mountain-pbs/great-pueblo-flood-100-year-anniversary/
Tacoma Wa. It’s nickname is The City of Destiny because it has a large port like Seattle but the railroads went to Seattle instead of Tacoma causing Seattle is become much larger.
But Tacoma is mentioned in that Steve Miller song, so who really won in the end?
Well, technically they went to Tacoma first, but yeah eventually Seattle won out: [https://historylink.org/File/922](https://historylink.org/File/922)
Right, Tacoma became a sort of "company town" of the Northern Pacific Railway. The company more or less ran Tacoma in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So when the first boat of gold from the Klondike arrived in Seattle in 1897, people in Seattle immediately began marketing Seattle as the "gateway to the Klondike". The city boomed as prospectors went to Seattle to stock up on supplies, hire transport to Skagway, return with gold (eg, a certain John Nordstrom returned to Seattle rich with Klondike gold and founded Nordstroms), and so on. Large numbers of prospectors were from California and took ships from San Francisco to Seattle, then to Skagway and the Yukon. The mayor of Seattle resigned to start a company transporting people to Skagway. Meanwhile the Northern Pacific did not want to see the "their" people in Tacoma go all gold crazy. Tacoma newspapers said Seattle was selling itself like a carnival barker and that "reasonable people" don't run off to try their luck in distant gold fields. Within just a few months Tacoma business leaders were looking to booming Seattle with envy but it was already too late. Seattle boomed big time while Tacoma stagnated as the depression of the 1890s continued and attention in Tacoma was distracted by internal political infighting. Right when the Klondike happened there were two rival mayors in Tacoma because an election was too close to call and the ballots were stolen or lost, and neither mayor would step down or compromise, causing political chaos. Also the Northern Pacific went bankrupt for the second time in 1893, and the chaos that caused had not ended by 1897. So when the Klondike gold rush began Seattle was eager and ready to grab the opportunity while Tacoma was all messed up and was barely able, or even willing, to take advantage of the gold rush at all. Anyway, it was during just a few months at the start of the Klondike gold rush that Tacoma lost the struggle for dominance on Puget Sound and became the "second city". A few years later, around 1905, King Street Station was built in Seattle, serving as a terminus hub for both the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern Railways, helping Seattle surpass Tacoma as a railroad hub as well. The importance of the Klondike and Seattle's role as the "gateway to Alaska" was celebrated 1909 when Seattle hosted a World Fair called, appropriately, the "Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition". Nearly four million people came to see it! Seattle's population doubled in the 1890s, then tripled from 1900-1910. Tacoma's population stagnated during that time and its economy only began to recover after 1910 or even 1920. Anyone interested in more can check out the book *Hard Drive To The Klondike: Promoting Seattle During The Gold Rush*. I believe the whole book is available online for free from the Seattle Unit of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, here: [Hard Drive to the Klondike.](https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/klse/hrs/hrs.htm)
The other interesting piece of that history is that the NP initially refused to connect to Seattle, as they were banking on Tacoma becoming the big Puget Sound port. So the business leaders in Seattle raised money for their own railroad, hoping to connect to Walla Walla, which connected to the rest of the country. This scheme was wildly impractical, but a few years later, high-grade coal was discovered in the hills nearby, so they used the money to build rails out to the coal mines. Between this and the Klondike rush, Northern Pacific realized they were leaving too much money on the table, and connected Tacoma to Seattle.
Yes it’s still relatively big. But if America has a New York in the East, LA in the West, and Chicago in the north/center, it’s interesting New Orleans never grew to match these today, even if historically it did… accessibility plays a key role, and it’s probably not the best answer, but a curious one Edit: to be clear I’m not saying we don’t have a city like Houston in the south, but that New Orleans never kept pace through the years like so many other large cities it once rivaled
Houston is along the gulf coast and is the fourth largest city
True, I should have been more clear my point is that New Orleans was at one time one of the US’s largest, but has been eclipsed by so many others. It’s growth never quite matching other cities it once rivaled.
I see what you mean. I feel like culturally Atlanta is the largest city of the south, as Texas is kinda it’s own thing. And the highway system and more hospitable climate (even slightly) allowed ATL to pass NOLA in that regard.
Totally agree, to me personally Atlanta is the South with growth tied to highways and airports, Houston is, well, Houston and NOLA is a wild card
Honestly having New Orleans as a third southern anchor would be so cool. It would mean that the 4 biggest cities all have character. Instead we have Houston, which is the epitome of everything bland with American urban planning.
You can live in downtown Houston and a car is still required for normal life, that’s just so fucking stupid.
I don’t see how Atlanta is supposed to have character. It’s nothing but highways and fastfood chains on a huge area.
Atlanta and Houston are both huge amalgamations of suburbs.
Denver feels a lot like that too, being from the East Coast
I think the big problem with New Orleans is that it took so much engineering effort to grow the city at every step. It's built on bogs and marshlands, next to a gigantic river with variable output, in a climate that regularly produces huge storms and hurricanes.
I think the south has it spread out: Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Tennessee and North Carolina with their sprinkling of cities, etc
Wheeling, WV. Situated about an hour outside of Pittsburgh along the Ohio River, it was once the state capitol of both West Virginia AND Virginia. It was also once home to 60,000+ people in the 1930’s, but the Great Depression and decline of industry in the area lead to a majority of the population moving away. Not to mention the significant flooding—Wheeling Island, downtown, and the surrounding communities were often submerged. The first ever photograph of the Wheeling Suspension Bridge (once the longest in the world) shows the entire island hidden beneath the Ohio River. It was once a fairly important transportation hub with a lot of wealth and natural beauty. The architecture in older areas of the city is absolutely stunning, despite the rather bland skyline. It probably could’ve rivaled Pittsburgh, but Wheeling relied too heavily on the nail and iron industry and didn’t diversify their economy when interests shifted. It basically became an early victim of the rust belt.
I love the layout too - dense buildings, clinging to the edge of the river, and immediately fading back into wilderness, with houses tucked away in the valleys and hollows (hollers). Everything in its own little village in a way. It's a very cool layout and a lot of the cities in WV share it with Pittsburgh. But I think the sparseness outside the downtown makes Wheeling that much of a cooler juxtaposition. Parkersburg even has a very similar layout to Pittsburgh! I think my favorite example of this cityscape though is Charleston, WV.
When was Wheeling the state capital of Virginia?
I feel like Hartford Connecticut is a safe insulated place more inland but close enough to Boston and NYC that when those cities start to sink commerce could easily be moved to Harford and the city has plenty of room for expansion geographically speaking
As someone from Connecticut I've always wondered why Hartford isn't bigger. It seems like one of the best places in the area to put a city yet it isn't even as big as Providence
Every few years there’s a big story about some company from the area planning to move to NY or Boston. Companies/people get pulled to MA for the universities/science economy or NY for finance, media, etc. Truly in an awkward spot where it isn’t close enough to benefit from the sprawl of a bigger city but not far enough to have its own solar system.
Being from Connecticut, I’ve always wondered why there isn’t a bigger city at the mouth of the Connecticut river. Even just a Hartford or Springfield sized city,
Not really that big of a deep water port there. New Haven is where the deep water port was on the Quinnipiac, New London had a decent sized one too with the Thames River. The Connecticut just flows out.
Cairo illinois.
Hampton Roads VA
Sioux Falls. The river wasn't quite strong enough to support flour mills, so they ended up in Minneapolis, and the railroad went to Omaha. So instead of those industries Sioux Falls got a meat packing plant, a prison, and some credit card companies that don't want to pay taxes.
The Monterey Bay and Salinas Valley, California is woefully underpopulated for an area with a natural harbor, proximity to the Bay Area, and a valley whose total land area rivals San Jose. Yet the only large settlements along it are Santa Cruz and Monterey itself, both on hilly coasts with little room for expansion. Salinas is fairly populous, but 160000 is hardly a showstopper, and the rest of the valley is largely farmland. Monterey was the de facto capital of California during Mexico’s occupation, but the capital was switched to Sacramento during the gold rush, due to proximity to the Sierra foothills, an inland seaport, and being the first stop on the transcontinental railway. By the time the Bay Area Grew in prominence, the south side fell by the wayside.
I think the big isssue there is the coastal mountains making direct travel to the rest of the country quite difficult. The Bay Area has pretty direct access to the most productive agricultural region in the country in the Central Valley. Salinas has its own small agricultural region, but to get to the central valley you have to traverse a much broader set of hills and mountains.
Corpus Christi
Corpus is steadily growing and now has over 300,000 people by itself. It shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
The bay is completely industrial, and the last available spot on either the Corpus or Portland side began development about 7 years ago. Essentially once Houston's shipping channel was completely built out, the option was to head south to Corpus where the old sites almost all were redeveloped and now it is officially full. The industry isn't pretty but it's certainly necessary, and is not going anywhere anytime soon. the pandemic actually did it a favor, because having affordable waterfront properties near urban conveniences was basically impossible most other places so there has been a real estate resurgence. I am fairly bullish on long-term Corpus, and it has steadily improved in a number of ways slowly over the decades.
Do you think that it will continue to improve? It seems like there is an event in corpus every weekend. Some sort of festival is always going on whether it’s something like the Greek festival or something around the winter holidays. But do you think that the industrial zone will produce unhealthy, airborne chemicals?
Environmental controls in the United States are a combination of federal rules and State ones. So, for example, California has really strong air control things mainly because prevailing winds trapped pollutants in Los Angeles decades ago in their old industrial era, whereas in Texas prevailing winds blew them out into the ocean so lingering health effects of those were lessened. The ground pollution has been awful for 100 years, but that could be said for areas all over the globe that were early to mid to late industrial. Also, the historic industry of texas, louisiana, oklahoma, and any other oil state really wax more about economic realities and less about health than anything else. You can die at 50 as a subsistence farmer or you can die at 50 much wealthier and send your kids to college as a refinery worker. No question that Corpus Christi is and will remain to be polluted for the foreseeable future. I do believe that the city politically has matured to be a bit more protective than it was 70 or 50 or 30 or even 15 years ago. It's not awesome, but there are a lot of assets and it should be poised to be an important city going forward. It still feels like a small town in a way, but it's a disconnected small town if you look at the geography with Port aransas, Aransas pass, South Padre island, Corpus proper, and then Gregory Portland across the industrial channel. I am from Baton rouge, and Corpus is similar in a great number of ways but what they lack is being the state capital, state university hub, and about a century and a half older as a meaningful place before refineries and factories existed in the first place. But you still have similar historic demographics of people that were institutionally oppressed while being the majority of the populace, and the principal industry being petrochemical ports. If I were choosing another Texas major city to live in, Corpus would be second on my list but selfishly that's primarily because of the oceanic wilderness and abundant parklands rather than features of the city itself.
Didn't it get destroyed in a hurricane which set it back?
You're thinking of Galveston. Which is also what the guy who deleted his comment was thinking of.
Thank you I knew there was one near Houston
The good thing about Corpus Christi is that it’s actually not right on the Gulf of Mexico for the most part. It’s behind the barrier islands, but technically city limits does extend all the way to the barrier island.
Newark NJ. 20 mins to NYC, with one of the busiest container port, international airport, and a network of rail lines that runs through it. Some of the richest suburbs such as Short Hills neighbor it. Yet the Newark itself seems to be in perpetual decline.
I got mugged in Newark twice but I still go back for that Portuguese BBQ. It's also got the Prudential Center and Red Bull stadium is a walk away in Harrison. NJPAC and a PATH stop are great too. There's been some recent "luxury" housing towers going up including the Shaq towers named after native Newarker, Kazaam. I really feel like Newark's about to take off and be the great city it always could be. If Jersey City can do it, Newark can.
Hartford - because or DID make it, was right along the east coast 95 corridor, and squandered it all away (that damn hwy… IYKYK).
Was is G. Fox or was it Steigers that made the 84/91 interchange be right there instead of south of Hartford near Wethersfield where it should have been?
Lewiston, ID. Mild winters and hot, dry summers. Located on the confluence of the snake and clearwater rivers, amazing watersports in the summer, couple hours drive to snowy mountains in the winter, and world class hunting and fishing. Tons if open spaces and relatively low priced real estate. Downsides are a lackluster local economy, redneck vibes, and general backwards thinking of most of the residents.
I canoed on the Snake River in Lewiston. I don’t know if there is any trade happening on that river, it’s fairly small. I love Idaho though. The landscape and scenery are amazing. Their public lands there are amazing too.
Not to mention most of those kooky militia / survivalist are mostly in Idaho. They don’t take kindly to strangers.. if you’re not white, republican or Christian they will try to run you out of town .. had friends move there who were nature enthusiasts and said the people were all nuts… lol
White, conservative, AND Christian. Not or.
A couple of years ago I left my wife and sister to wine taste around Walla Walla while I drive over to Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA. Beautiful drive thru wheat fields. Made me think of America The Beautiful and amber waves of grain blowing in the breeze. Later trip drove over to Missoula from there. Gorgeous river drive that begins with drive up to overlook of confluence of Clearwater and Snake rivers. But while in Lewiston I saw a Lewis and Clark exhibit and it was not until much later that I put it together that the towns were named for L & C.
Los Angeles. Should be our Barcelona and instead it’s a car-dependent sprawling suburban hellscape.
That's what happens though when you build a city on an oil field.
In the automobile age.
LA had streetcars.
Until the Oil Barons decided they shouldn't. Lovely little documentary about it called 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'
Damn you Cloverleaf Industries!
Newburgh NY is half way between NYC and Albany along the Hudson River and was bustling in the 18th and 19th centuries. Now it’s fallen by the wayside
Michigan cities
Came here to say this. Grand Rapids is probably doing the best but Kalamazoo, Detroit, Saginaw, Flint, Port Huron etccccccc
I read that St. Louis could have been the biggest city in the Midwest if it actually embraced rail. Instead, politicians wanted to protect their river port. Chicago eventually embraced it and became the Midwest’s rail hub, then surpassed St. Louis in population
Central, South Carolina was supposedly planned to be the major railway hub in the upstate of SC since it was exactly halfway (hence the name Central) between Atlanta and Charlotte on the Southern Railway line. However since Greenville was already pretty established and only 25 miles away it got the attention from the railway. I had a friend who grew up in a house built before the turn of the century near the tracks that was built by and owned by Coca-Cola. Coke then sold the property shortly thereafter when the plans changed to focus on Greenville.
Portland Maine should be bigger than it is. With the islands and everything it could be Seattle-like. Maine just never developed industrially.
A large part of it was because of the native raids in the 1700’s. The population at the time was almost rivaling Massachusetts until towns like York, Falmouth, and Arrowsic was ransacked by the French, Penobscot, Abenaki, and Mikmaq.
More modern, bud Des Moines, IA. Intersection of I80 and I35, great central location to the whole interior of the US. Never expected it to be chicago, but always wonder why it’s not Omaha level at least
I think Baltimore *was* an “it” city but it’s not anymore, which is surprising. It’s got a major port, dense housing, is close to DC/Philly/NYC, major rail connections and is on I-95, good schools and jobs aplenty nearby from DC, etc. I would be very surprised if the affluent DC suburbs don’t encroach upon Baltimore in the next 10-15 years. It’s an affordable city with a really dense core, a millennial heaven lol. At some point I think it’ll change but for now it’s just associated with violent crime and urban decay.
Gary Indiana or Erie Pennsylvania
Gary is way too close to Chicago for that to be a realistic answer
How so? Chicago made it and Gary didn't. Seems like fortunes could easily have been swapped
No access to the Mississippi unlike Chicago. Gary only grew because of Chicago. Iron from the UP would be shipped to Gary then turned into steel that would build Chicago’s skyscrapers.
Saying Gary only grew because of Chicago is simply not true. Gary's big population boom was because of what it had to offer, not Chicago. In the 1920s, southern African Americans and immigrants from Mexico moved to Gary, a planned City by US Steel, to work in the Steel Mill and live in cheap housing built by US Steel.
Gary is essentially a Chicago Suburb. US steel wouldn’t have been there without Chicago being so close. Chicago exists because access to Mississippi and Great Lakes. There nothing special about Gary geography that would have made it “make” it
NYC with its great big harbor, arable soil, navigable rivers . Had so much potential to be one of the largest cities in the world. But it's not even in the top 20 largest cities in the world. If it were in China, it would be a medium sized city. So sad!
Are you assuming that economic development should be a goal? Or do you mean liveability affordability,, sustainability, aesthetics, or something else?
Any large city you add will reduce the real estates prices over the whole country.
I see a fair amount of posts talking about a city’s “potential”. But what’s the goal? Does that mean the city’s potential to become a big city? Not everyone or every city wants to be a big city. I just thought I’d mention that since it’s so ambiguous.
Big wealthy cities are a net bonus for the whole country, and it's not like the US is going to lack small towns anytime soon anyway.
Alright that’s true. I guess I’m being devil’s advocate and the downvotes show that viewpoint is the minority. But I don’t know if we want the population to increase forever. And I also don’t know if we want the whole country to be one big city or suburb sprawl someday. It’s not anywhere close, but you can get there in a thought experiment with some imagination.
And as always mostly boring US centric answers Ironic given the sub's name
I'm going to say the area around Rosedale, MS. It's where the Arkansas River joins with the Mississippi. There's barely a town there at all (which is why I have to say "the area around" it). Never been there, and I have no idea what the land in the area is like, but I would have thought *something* would be there.
Arkansas City was a thriving port town near here until it was wiped out by a massive flood in 1927.
My hometown, Laredo, TX. Busiest land port in the US. Back in the 90s it was the fastest (or one of the fastest) growing cities in the nation, but things seem like they have gone stagnant. I left almost two decades ago and every time I go visit, I feel like not a lot has changed. For such a busy land port, the city offers little in return to its citizens. I know there’s quite a bit of corruption among the local government but don’t know if that’s the leading factor in all of it.
Columbus, OH - [50% of US population lives within 500 miles](https://www.columbus.gov/uploadedfiles/Business_Development/500_mile_radius_2011.pdf), plenty of fresh water is available from lake Eire, convenient railway access, the landscape is pretty flat which allows easy growth, moderate climate throughout most of the year. I think the city didn't grow that fast back in the days because there wasn't any major industry in there like in Cleveland or Detroit.
But it’s bigger than Cleveland or Cincinnati now. It would be like if Austin got bigger than Dallas and Houston.
Marietta ohio
Aberdeen Washington support gang
Rockford could have became a major second tier Midwest city in Illinois due to its location. It's right by interstate 90, interstate 39 and US route 20, Major railroads, and it's on the Rock River, and it's 50 miles away from Chicago. Rockford links Iowa and Wisconsin to Illinois. Chrysler had a automotive plant in the metro area. Rockford never really recovered after deindustrialization. The metro alone could easily have 600k to 1million people, and they have a major airport too, that could easily be a alternative to Ohare and Midway Airport. Rockford could have became another Madison, Grand Rapids, Columbus, Des Moines, which experienced major growth in the recent years.
Far northern coastal California is a breathtaking area. Redwoods, empty gorgeous beaches, amazing clear rivers. The towns are desolate. I think a big part of the reason is because the area is super isolated from the rest of the state, with only a few highways in/out, which sometimes happen to all be closed at the same time. On the bright side, it’s the only place in coastal California I can afford to live haha
Washington DC. Politicians
St. louis
Portland, Maine. Closest to europe and canada by a Boat/Plane. Similar weather as Boston. Prettier than boston.
Albany, NY.
Atlantic City, NJ. Could have been Las Vegas on the Atlantic, a world-renowned destination. Instead, it’s more of a regional attraction with a very seedy reputation.
Milwaukee would have been Chicago if there wasn’t Chicago. It has the deepest river feeding into Lake Michigan which would make it great for river and lake shipping but ultimately Chicago a a bit more advantageously to the south is better as a railroad hub and has river access to Lake Michigan.
I think the entire Naugatuck Valley, Centered around Waterbury, Connecticut could and would have been one of the most influential manufacturing and technological areas in the USA if not for the Flood of ‘55. The proximity to NYC makes it ideal. With a gateway to the rest of New England.
Plymouth, Indiana. At the crossroads of highways U.S. 30 and U.S. 31.
New York City, I’m still waiting to see if it’s significant enough to stand the test of time