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Las Vegas, New Mexico. Once the population and financial center of New Mexico (then territory) in the late 1870s, it would later fail with the slow down of the railroads.
i have to agree w/ the question posed by sir. i don't think philly should be in this mix. first, its history, as it relates to american history, will never diminish. we should always give philly a nod. second, the city is not on the skids. it has solid infrastructure, regrowth potential, and major corporations, educational institutions, and tourist trade.
even st. louis, though it has suffered in the present economy---who hasn't, truth be told---isn't going under, pretty much, it is doing what most other major american cities are doing, reinventing and realigning itself. as to the relation to the question posed, i don't know if it will be equal to the strengths it had in the 19-20th centuries, but it isn't going to go away.
i think that detroit has problems beyond industrial base, manfacturing, and other economics. its infrastructure has deteriorated to the point that it is going to have to relinquish its city proper, regroup, and see if citizens will move into the proper, repopulate, get a solid taxbase, and stop the hemorrhaging. san fran and other cities have 7-8 hundred thousand in a small amount of sq mileage, there are many cities in this country that are going to have to reassess this issue. we have to begin valuing land and resources. the throw away buildings of 10-20 years, built by greedy non-thinking developers is coming to an end, hopefully.
Baltimore and Cleveland were the only U.S. cities to have reached more than 900,000 but less than 1 million people, both by the mid-20th century. St. Louis came close, but never quite hit 900,000. Today, St. Louis has just under 300,000, and that city once hosted the World's Fair and the summer Olympics.
After the 1900 storm, development moved inland to Houston, and Galveston today is a sleepy beach town.
Houston was already bigger than Galveston in 1900. Houston was already a large rail hub, and the point at which overland travel would meet sea travel. Two years later, Spindletop was closer to Beaumont, but its land-water transport advantages made Houston the oil hub.
My teacher use to tell us that Newport, RI would have been what NYC is today, if not for the British blockade which caused American commerce to move to New York during the time of the Revolutionary War. Newport never regained it's prominence and today has only about 25, 000 people.
NYC was occupied by the British, that argument makes absolutely no sense. NYC was the leading import hub by far in the early 1800s, Newport was not in a position to distribute goods to the rest of the country. It also lacked the proximity and lower cost overland connections to the textile mills that Providence had. Providence had river connections to the interior, including the Blackstone Canal to Worcester, that Newport lacked. Providence was bigger than Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee in 1860.
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