Location dictated: a major city had to be here.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by santafe400

Baltimore is a very strategically located port city. In fact Baltimore was larger than most major cities up until the mid 90's.

It certainly doesn’t have to work out the same way it did for StL. Baltimore is, as you note, is similar to StL as it pulled out of its county, but some cities that didn’t secede from their counties still share with StL and Balt being combined cities/counties....San Francisco and Philadelphia....and neither of them were harmed by not being able to gobble up their hinterlands (although SF Co, I believe, lost its southern portion that became its own county, San Mateo, whose boundaries includes the an extremely large part of The Peninsula.

I think the dynamics of StL differed greatly from these other three cities. StL alone is issolated from other urban complexes so it sort of became a battle of city vs. county as to which would be prime.

Baltimore and Philly are not only a stone’s throw away from each other, but part of athe extremely dense northeast corridor...so you weren’t going to get the same city vs. suburb situation

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by edsg25

I think you misunderstood me. When I said too far north for Montreal ans also too far east for Boston, I was thinking of the United States, not Europe.

Im certainly aware how far north Europe is and that many are fooled thinking it is further south than it is due to the warmth brought in on the gulf stream

But a lot of the reason why NYC boomed so much after the Erie Canal opened was because it became the port of choice for export of American goods to Europe. I suppose that cotton and the like would still be more likely to go up the Atlantic coast for processing before getting shipped out though.

[biscuit_head]

Originally Posted by Desert_SW_77

I always found Pittsburgh at the confluence of three rivers, and essentially THE major city for Appalachian region to be an intriguing location for a city.

To me the most obvious locations for major cities are the ones with big harbors; Boston, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. Around the world, the one thing the British were best at when they established colonies were surveying and establishing settlements (or conquering) around some of the world's greatest harbors.

One's that puzzle me a bit, are Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Dallas/Fort Worth. I understand in modern day settlement there are legit reasons for them to be major cities. LA had a large basin of land to build on, as does the Valley of the Sun that surrounds Phoenix. DFW historically on the cattle drives of the Chisholm Trail. But their locations really don't stand out as absolutely obvious locations for a major city, like San Francisco or Chicago do. Los Anegels had no natural harbor, Phoenix is just a valley, no big river and no major city right on the Colorado River in the Southwest, and Dallas is kind of in the middle of nowhere topographically.

Los Angeles was originally designed as a settlement/Pueblo by the Governor of Alta California between two Missions along the El Camino Real (San Fernando and San Gabriel) to reduce their secular power. The expansion of the Santa Fe Railroad in the late 1800s is what really made the city boom - along with obtaining its water supply from the Owens Valley via aqueduct - laying the foundation to it surpassing San Francisco (a more traditional type of city on a large natural harbor) years later. Combine that with the benign climate (for farming and agriculture at first), boom from the oil industry, movie industry and the advent of manufacturing and defense contractors in the mid-20th century and there you have it. Los Angeles was never meant to be as big as it was nor was it a traditional city (even compared to other California cities) from the get-go.

Dallas is where it is because it was one of the few natural fords along the Trinity River and the Preston Trail running in the area. The Chisholm trail helped Fort Worth grow into what it is today.

Phoenix was an agricultural hub and Natives established a canal system along the Salt River hundreds of years before white settlers arrived in the area. However, I always think of King of The Hill and that quote about Phoenix being a monument to man's arrogance.