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Its location is pretty much the best in the nation...its the very southern most point of the great lakes. Anythind going east west in the northern 1/3 of the country must go through Gary. Its rail/highway/transpotation assets are unmatched.
It is yes still home to the nations largest ateel mill, it has a 6 mile beach with stunning views of the Chicago skyline over the lake..truly one of the nations most majestic sights. It also has the campus for Indiana University Northwest, three stops on the south shore line that terminates at Millenium Station under The Bean, it is in the slice of Chicagoland that is fiscally sane (Indiana vs. Illinois for ESL or Jersey for Camden? ). Arguably both Camden and ESL lie in states that are generally worse off than their larger cities across the rivers.
Gary also has casino boats, harbors, a growing airport that recently expanded its runway and opened its first ever customs/immigration facility. And of course there is the stunning Indiana Dunes national park...in fact the area of the park that lies in Gary proper has about the highest biodiversity in the nation. Not too shabby for a city many thought was near death.
Camden if I had to choose, but maybe I'm bias due to the Philly area is one of my favorites and will always be a 2nd home. After that Gary,,, don't know much about East Saint Louis, never been there... If it is any thing like Camden or Gary I know what it is and I'm sure I'm not missing much but in a nut shell from my experience these are places you might want to stay away from and is definitely no place to live...Big no no's
All places seem great for urban exploration. I had a good time Google searching them. I’ve always had an interest in abandoned places. Gary seems like it has a lot of interesting sites, just from Google images — like the movie theater and big church. Would love to take a ride through one day honestly.
The only one of these places I’ve actually been to is Camden though.
Camden if I had to choose, but maybe I'm bias due to the Philly area is one of my favorites and will always be a 2nd home. After that Gary,,, don't know much about East Saint Louis, never been there... If it is any thing like Camden or Gary I know what it is and I'm sure I'm not missing much but in a nut shell from my experience these are places you might want to stay away from and is definitely no place to live...Big no no's
I have been to East St. Louis, the nation's largest incorporated slum.
I'd say that little city (it has less than half the population of the other two and has lost a greater percentage of its peak population than they have) is so utterly and hopelessly dysfunctional that St. Clair County should put it out of its misery and run it directly.
(FWIW, the state of New Jersey did step in and take over Camden's municipal government as a condition of a bailout of the city treasury in 2002. I believe the state returned control to the locals in 2012, but its finances still are in poor shape.)
Camden's downtown waterfront and the adjacent Cooper's Ferry neighborhood (home to the Camden campus of Rutgers University, New Jersey's state university) are actually pretty nice now, thanks to a bunch of public and private investments; there are even some tourist draws in the form of the New Jersey State Aquarium (now Adventure Aquarium), the Susquehanna Bank Center ampitheater and the battleship USS New Jersey, which was built in the city. Poet Walt Whitman's last home on Martin Luther King Boulevard is also a minor tourist draw and historic site. There are also a few other anchor institutions still based in the city, including Cooper University Hospital and Campbell Soup Company.
Gary, as has already been noted, still has the massive U.S. Steel works and the Indiana Dunes.
Thats interesting about Walt Whitmans home
A similar literary landmark in Gary is the beach cottage Nelson Algren owned in Miller. Simone de Beauvoir was Algrens lover and spent time with him in the Dunes.
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