US Cities

Did You Know? Albuquerque hosts America’s largest powwow, drawing around 150,000 spectators. Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque in 1975. The “Breaking Bad” TV series was shot in Albuquerque. During the U.S. Civil War, Albuquerque ...

Did You Know? In 1845, California Gov. Pio Pico sold the San Juan Capistrano Mission to a relative for $750; it was worth more than $54,000. About half the 28,000 people at ...

Did You Know? There more than 50 glaciers within the Anchorage municipality. Anchorage has more espresso stands, per capita, than any U.S. city. On a clear day, Mount McKinley can be seen from ...

Did You Know? The Maryland State House has been in legislative use since 1779, the longest in the U.S. The Susquehanna River pours 19 million gallons of water a minute into Chesapeake ...

Atlanta, Georgia

Did You Know … ? The Atlantic City Boardwalk (1870) was created to keep sand out of beachfront hotels and railroad cars. The Miss America Pageant got its start (1921) as a ...

Did You Know? Auburn is the only U.S. city with a line item in its budget for removing toilet tissue from trees. Auburn University’s football team has participated in 39 bowl games. When ...

Did You Know? Austin’s airport has three live-music venues. Austin’s capitol building claims the largest gross square footage of all U.S. state capitols. In summer, Austin hosts North America’s largest urban bat population, ...

Did You Know? The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was the first public carrier railway in the U.S. (1828).  “The Star-Spangled Banner” was originally entitled “Defense of Fort M’Henry.” Besides taking a poem’s ...

Did You Know? Baton Rouge, meaning red stick in French, was named for blood-red sticks spotted by French explorers. The 53,000-square-foot Nottoway Plantation House is the South’s largest antebellum mansion. The Louisiana State ...

Did You Know? In 1905, Kalamazoo had 17 auto manufacturers, more than Detroit. Seventh-Day Adventists formally organized their church in Battle Creek in 1863. The Kellogg brothers created their first toasted flakes by ...

Did You Know? The 1980 eruption of Washington State’s Mount St. Helens left an inch of ash on the ground in Billings. During a Billings residency (1922), Charles Lindbergh demonstrated parachute jumps ...

Did You Know? Birmingham hosted the country’s first Veterans Day celebration (1947). Birmingham is the only place where all ingredients for making iron — coal, iron ore and limestone — are within ...

Did You Know? Boise has the highest percent of Basques of any place outside the Pyrenees Mountains. Boise was first in the nation to harness hot springs for heating (1892); the system ...

Did you know…? The Boston Marathon, mother of all city marathons, was first run in 1897 with 15 racers. Boston hosted the first baseball World Series (Boston Pilgrims vs. the Pittsburgh Pirates) ...

Did You Know? In spring, it can cost up to $36,000 to open the high-altitude Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. Actor Robert Redford was a janitor at The Sink ...

Did You Know….? Branson’s tourism business dates back to 1907. Eighty-two percent of the town’s visitors arrive in their personal vehicles. Branson boasts around 58,000 theater seats, more than are in New York’s ...

Did You Know? Former Buffalo mayor, William Fargo, cofounded American Express (1850) and Wells Fargo Bank (1852). Once in history, an ice jam stopped the flow of Niagara Falls (March 1848). Buffalo’s Statler ...

Did You Know … ? Ben & Jerry’s opened its first shop in a rundown gas station in Burlington, in 1978. Ethan Allen, of Green Mountain Boys fame, lived in Burlington for ...

Did You Know? When seeking statehood, Nevada telegraphed its constitution (16,543 words) to D.C. for $4,313.27 in 1861 dollars. The nearby Comstock Lode was the world’s largest silver find. John Wayne’s last movie, ...

Did You Know … ? Charles Towne Landing was the first permanent English settlement in the Carolinas (1670). The real Catfish Row in Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” is a place in Charleston ...

Did You Know? Charlotte is home to 90% of all NASCAR team shops. Charlotte doubles for Washington, D.C., in the TV drama, “Homeland.”  The first gold found in America (1899), a 17-pound nugget, ...

Did You Know? Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park saw the bloodiest two-day battle of the Civil War (36,000 casualties). The tilt on the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway maxes out at 72.7%. The ...

Did You Know…? Route 66 starts in Chicago. The city’s first known settler was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a black man. Chicago is the Windy City because of Chicagoan bragging about the ...

Did You Know? Cincinnati’s Gibson Greeting Card Company was the first to publish greeting cards in the U.S. (1850). Three presidents were born in or near Cincinnati: Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison ...

Did You Know? Cleveland’s Winton Motor Carriage Co. placed the earliest known car ads in Scientific American (1898). Cleaveland was the original name, but a newspaper dropped a letter to fit the ...

Did You Know? Coeur d’Alene is home to the world’s only golf course with a floating green. The entire town of Wallace is on the National Register of Historic Places. Since 1884, the ...

Did You Know … ? Colonial Williamsburg is the world’s largest living history museum at 301 acres. The Wren Building at the College of William and Mary is America’s oldest academic building ...

Did You Know? Pikes Peak Cog Railway is the world’s highest cog railroad, rising to the summit (14,110 feet). Athletes at the Olympic Training Center consume 15,000 gallons of milk a year. Katharine ...

Did You Know? Fort Jackson is America’s largest active training center for Army recruits. The Big Apple dance craze originated with Columbia’s African-American community (1937). Of 42 South Carolina flour mills in 1942, ...

Did You Know? Columbus is America’s largest city (more than 800,000) named after Christopher Columbus. The American Whistle Corporation is the only maker of metal whistles in the U.S. James Thurber, humorist and ...

Did You Know? The world’s first and largest convenience store, 7-Eleven, got its start in Dallas (1927). The integrated circuit computer chip (later, the microchip) was invented in Dallas (1958). Sixty percent of ...

Did You Know? Dearborn’s first automaker was the Detroit-Dearborn Motor Company (1909), which made 110 cars. In 1914, Ford’s assembly line could assemble a Model T in 93 minutes. Dearborn’s Ford Airport installed the ...

Did you know… ? Denver is the home of the cheeseburger, invented by Louis Ballast (1935). The entire world’s supply of Colorado onyx was used in the Capitol building; no one can ...

Did You Know? The McCaughey septuplets, born in Des Moines (1997), were the world’s first set to survive infancy. “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995) was filmed in nearby Winterset and Adel. Ronald ...

Did You Know? Ford Motor Company sold 15 million-plus Model Ts worldwide (1908 to 1927). Windsor in Ontario, Canada, is south of Detroit. The Ambassador Bridge on the Detroit River is the busiest ...

Did You Know? When ice sculpting was revived in Fairbanks (1988), sculptors used commercial ice from Seattle. The 1,523-mile Alaska Highway, ending in Fairbanks, was built in eight months as a World ...

Did You Know? Flagstaff was the highest-altitude city on the historic Route 66 (6,900-plus feet). Astronomers at Lowell Observatory discovered Pluto, the on-again, off-again planet, in 1930. The meteor that created Meteor Crater ...

Did You Know? The 1960 movie, “Where the Boys Are,” set in Fort Lauderdale, turned the resort into spring break central. Palm Beach got its palms — and later its name — ...

Did You Know? John Greenleaf Whittier celebrated the wrong woman in “The Ballad of Barbara Fritchie;” the flag waver was Mary Quantrell. Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star-Spangled Banner” lyrics, was ...

Did You Know … ? Before the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant clerked in his father’s leather goods store in Galena, for $600 a year. More than 85% of Galena is listed ...

Did You Know? To protect the town’s trees in the 1830s, Greenville fined citizens who even tied their horses to the trees. Civil rights advocate Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville in ...

Did You Know? West Hartford-born Noah Webster learned 26 languages doing research for his dictionaries. The first American-authored cookbook (“American Cookery” by Amelia Simmons) was published in Hartford (1796). America’s first accident insurance ...

Did You Know? The fictional James Bond preferred Sea Island cotton for his shirts. When Englishman William Hilton landed at the Island (1663), he found Spanish-speaking Indians (Florida transplants). Hilton Head was the ...

Did You Know … ? The Iolani Palace is the only official residence of royalty in the U.S. First efforts to lure tourists began in 1892, interrupted by Hawaii’s bubonic plague in ...

Did You Know? Houston was the first word spoken by astronauts on the moon (1969). Texas Medical Center is the world’s largest medical complex with 106,000 employees. Houston Grand Opera is the only ...

Did You Know? Huntsville has the largest collection of antebellum homes in Alabama. Actress Tallulah Bankhead was born in Huntsville in 1902. Huntsville was originally called Twickenham. The city’s Museum of Art houses America’s ...

Did You Know? The winner of the first Indy 500 in 1911 (Ray Harroun) drove the first car with a rearview mirror. Indianapolis was purpose built to be Indiana’s capital. Elvis Presley played ...

Did You Know? There are an estimated 300 places to buy a book in the Iowa City area. Nearby Dyersville, Iowa, was a key film location for the movie, “Field of Dreams” ...

Did You Know? Jacksonville is the largest city in the 48 contiguous U.S. states (840 square miles). The first Technicolor film, “The Gulf Between,” was filmed in Jacksonville (1917). A judge attended a ...

Did You Know? Aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared over the Pacific in 1937, was born in Atchison (1897). The city is home to Verruckt, the world’s tallest water slide (168 feet, seven inches), ...

Did You Know? Hallmark Cards started in Kansas City with founder, Joyce Hall, selling postcards from a shoebox (1910). The jazz players’ jam session originated in Kansas City. Russell Stover Candies, with 25 ...

Did You Know … ? The Keys are home to the only living coral barrier reef in the U.S. The first international phone call was made Christmas Day 1900, Key West to ...

Did You Know? Frontiersman Davy Crockett was born in Greene County, east of Knoxville, in 1786. When Knoxville hosted the 1982 World’s Fair, it was the smallest city (180,000) to host an ...

Las Vegas, Nevada

Did You Know? Don Laughlin built a bridge linking Laughlin to Bullhead City, Ariz., then gave the bridge to Nevada and Arizona. There is enough concrete in Hoover Dam and its power ...

Did You Know? Lexington was named for the first battle site of the American Revolution. More than 1.3 million people visited thoroughbred Man o’ War after the racehorse retired. Carrie Nation, the temperance ...

Did You Know? The bronze front doors on the State Capitol, costing $10,000 at Tiffany’s a century ago, are worth $250,000. The city’s Big Dam Bridge is the world’s longest pedestrian and ...

Did you know….? With its population of 10.1 million, Los Angeles County would rank as the eighth-largest U.S. state. Jerry Seinfeld’s New York apartment is in Los Angeles. There are 5.2 million cars ...

Did You Know? Louisville-born sisters Mildred and Patty Hill wrote the “Happy Birthday” song. The E.P. Tom Sawyer State Park is named for Diane Sawyer’s father, not a Mark Twain character. The rose ...

Did You Know? The city was named for James Madison, but streets were named for others who also participated in writing the U.S. Constitution. The city’s convention center debuted in 1997, 59 ...

Did You Know? In the early 20th century, the Amoskeag company was the world’s largest producer of cotton textiles. The SEE Science Center has the world’s largest LEGO installation at minifigure scale. Manchester-born ...

Did You Know … ? W.C. Handy wrote and published the first blues song, “Memphis Blues,” around 1909; he later wrote “Beale Street Blues.” A quarter of the stars in the Rock ...

Did You Know? Miami Beach became a city in 1915 with a population of less than 100. Benjamin Green, a local pharmacist, created the first suntan lotion (1944), which became Coppertone. Miami Beach’s ...

Did you know … ? Schnebly Redland’s Winery in Homestead is the southernmost winery in America. Miami Beach is a man-made island that was once a coconut plantation. More cruise ships are based ...

Did You Know? The Milwaukee Mile is the world’s oldest operating motor speedway (1903). Frederick Miller founded Miller Brewing (1855) using yeast he carried in his pocket from Europe. The Harley-Davidson motorcycle was ...

Did You Know….? Every resident lives within six blocks of a park. Minneapolis claims more golfers per capita than any other U.S. city. The city was the world’s top flour producer from 1882 ...

Did You Know? Mobile was the original capital of Louisiana Territory. America’s first Mardi Gras was staged in Mobile (1703). Alabama harvests more than 240 species of freshwater fish, marine fish and shellfish. The ...

Did You Know? In 1910, Orville and Wilbur Wright established the first civilian flying school in Montgomery. F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived in Montgomery while he was writing “Tender Is the ...

Did you know….? Duffers play about 4.13 million rounds of golf in the Myrtle Beach area each year. Myrtle Beach got its name as a result of a newspaper’s naming contest. In 1901, ...

Did You Know … ? The Nautilus, in nearby Groton, was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine (1954). Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall honeymooned at the Inn at Mystic. Mystic Seaport is home to ...

Did you know… ? The driveway at President Jackson’s Hermitage is shaped like a guitar. Nashville’s first hit was called “Here’s Your Mule,” written in the 1850s. The Jack Daniel Distillery is America’s ...

Did You Know? Founded in 1638, New Haven was America’s first planned city, laid out in nine squares. Yale hosted the first five-on-five men’s basketball game in 1897. In 1784, Meigs, Bowen and ...

Did You Know … ? New Orleans, founded in 1718, was destroyed twice by hurricanes in its first three years. The Battle of New Orleans occurred after the War of 1812 ended, ...

Did You Know…? The world’s first speed limit law was passed in New York City in 1652. Washington Square was once a potter’s field where trees were used for hangings. The Statue of ...

Did You Know? Branch Brook Park was America’s first county park opened to the public (1900). Newark originated as a theocracy founded in 1666 by disgruntled Puritans from Connecticut. Inventor Thomas Edison set ...

Did You Know … ? Newport codified the concept of separation of church and state in its statutes in 1641. The America’s Cup stayed in Newport more than 50 years, from 1930 ...

Did You Know? The Westport playhouse was previously a barn built for a leatherworks factory (1835). Twenty million people live within an hour’s drive of Long Island Sound. In the 1800s, residents of ...

Did You Know? Assateague Island’s horses are pony sized because of the island’s nutrient-poor grasses. When active (1878-1964), the Ocean City Life-Saving Station responded to seven major shipwrecks. Since a 1933 hurricane, the ...

Did You Know? Oklahoma City grew to more than 10,000 on the first day of the historic Land Run of April 22, 1889. Oklahoma City installed the world’s first parking meter (1935). The ...

Did You Know … ? Disney’s Magic Kingdom is the world’s most-visited theme park. Orlando calculates it would take 67 days to see all its more than 95 attractions. The city boasts more ...

Did you know….? Elvis and Priscilla Presley honeymooned in Palm Springs. The Agua Caliente Indians are the city’s biggest landowners with 6,700 acres. There are more than 100 golf courses in the greater ...

Did You Know? Pensacola is on the first attempted European settlement site on U.S. soil (1559). The 911-foot USS Oriskany is at the core of the world’s largest artificial reef. The 160-mile-long Gulf ...

Did You Know? Edwin Booth was owner of the Walnut Street Theatre when his brother john Wilkes Booth killed President Lincoln. The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia can churn out more than 2 ...

Did you know … ? The Phoenix 320-acre town site cost $550 in 1874; downtown lots sold for $7 to $11. The now-defunct Ingleside Inn, this area’s first resort for winter visitors, ...

Did You Know? The first U.S. public TV station was Pittsburgh’s WQED (1954). Heinz ketchup is no longer made at the firm’s Pittsburgh plant. Dr. Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine at the ...

Did You Know … ? Portland Head Light was commissioned by President Washington and is Maine’s oldest lighthouse (1791). Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow grew up in Portland; his family home is the ...

Did you know…? Portland got its name based on a coin toss. The name that lost? Boston. Powell’s City of Books is the world’s largest independent bookstore. Mill Ends Park is the world’s ...

Did You Know? Portsmouth was first named Strawbery Banke for the wild strawberries on the riverbank. Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth to warn of British intentions there, months before his famous 1775 ...

Did You Know? Rockingham, a house in nearby Kingston, was George Washington’s final wartime headquarters. The Indiana Jones life story names Princeton as the fictional character’s birthplace. Nassau Hall in Princeton was the ...

Did You Know? Raleigh was founded in 1792 specifically to be North Carolina’s state capital. President Andrew Johnson, successor to Abraham Lincoln, was born in Raleigh (1808). The University of North Carolina at ...

Did You Know…? Comstock produced $400 million worth of silver; today, there are 31 Comstock cemeteries. Reno is slightly west of Los Angeles. Lake Tahoe is 1,685 feet deep but between 6,220 and ...

Did You Know? President Thomas Jefferson designed the Virginia State Capitol building. One-quarter of the battles but 60% of Civil War casualties occurred within 75 miles of Richmond. Richmond was the first test ...

Did You Know? The world’s largest almond plant, Sacramento’s Blue Diamond, processes 12 million pounds of nuts daily in peak season. The Sacramento-St. Joseph, Mo., Pony Express required 200 relay stations, 500 ...

Did You Know? During the American Revolution, Salem’s fleet captured or sank 455 British vessels. In 1790, Salem was America’s richest city on a per capita basis. A catastrophic 1914 fire left 18,000 ...

Did You Know? Willamette University was the first institution of higher learning west of the Rockies (1842). The city’s name Salem is an Anglicized form of the Hebrew word shalom, meaning peace. A.C. ...

Did You Know? When the Mormons arrived in Salt Lake Valley (1847), it was part of Mexico. The Great Salt Lake is two to seven times saltier than the oceans. Based on best ...

Did you know … ? Market Square is the largest Mexican marketplace outside of Mexico. There were survivors at the Alamo bloodletting: a score of women and children plus one male slave. The ...

Did you know….? California was born in San Diego; it was the state’s first Spanish settlement (1769). San Diego hosts the world’s largest military complex. The city claims the highest number of PhDs ...

Did you know….? An average of 39 million vehicles cross the Golden Gate Bridge each year. The 1906 earthquake killed 3,000 people and destroyed 28,000 buildings. San Francisco has an estimated 14,000 Victorian ...

Did You Know? San Jose was California’s first civilian settlement (1777) and the state’s first capital (1850). Local mines produced more than 37,500 tons of mercury, more valuable than any California gold ...

Did You Know? The screen in the Hearst Castle theater is eight times the size of a standard movie screen. The world’s first modern motel, the Milestone Mo-Tel, opened in San Luis ...

Did You Know … ? Much of the movie, “Sideways” (2004), was shot in the Santa Barbara wine country. Kinko’s launched its business at UC in Santa Barbara, in a corner of ...

Did You Know? Hawaiian royalty introduced surfing to the U.S. mainland at Santa Cruz (1885). California’s first highway, El Camino Real, connected Spanish missions. The sports mascot at UC Santa Cruz is a ...

Did You Know … ? Santa Fe is the highest-altitude capital city in the U.S. (6,950 feet). The name Santa Fe means holy faith in Spanish. The church at San Miguel Mission is ...

Did You Know … ? Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin (1793) at the Mulberry Grove Plantation near Savannah. John Wesley was a rector at Savannah’s Christ Church (1736-1737) — before founding ...

Did you know … ? Seattle had the first “skid road”  — the name referred to a road built to transport logs. Despite its reputation, the city gets less rain than Mobile, ...

Did You Know … ? St. Augustine was the first permanent European settlement in the U.S. (1565). St. Augustine is the site of America’s oldest wooden schoolhouse (1716 or earlier). The oldest masonry ...

Did You Know? St. Louis hosted America’s first Olympic Games in 1904. Charles Lindbergh named his plane “Spirit of St. Louis” to honor St. Louis supporters who paid for the craft. The Budweiser ...

Did You Know? St. Michaels was one of the models for Patamoke village in James Michener’s “Chesapeake.” Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America (4,500 square miles). The abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, ...

Did You Know … ? St. Paul was originally called Pig’s Eye after a man named Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Parrant. Charles Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” cartoons, was a St. Paul native. In ...

Did You Know? St. Petersburg boasts the world’s longest run of consecutive sunny days (768 days, from Feb. 9, 1967). Coastal waters were home to pirates in the 19th century. America’s first air ...

Did you know … ? The term Florida cracker refers to the crack of the whip used by area cowmen. The world’s first commercial flight operated from St. Petersburg to Tampa (1914). The ...

Did You Know … ? Taos Pueblo is the only living Native American community that is both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Historic Landmark. Some area irrigation ditches built ...

Did You Know? A staple of Mexican menus, the nonsensically named chimichanga was created by accident in Tucson. Mount Lemmon is the southernmost ski destination in the U.S. A saguaro cactus can be ...

Did You Know? Muskogean Indian Chief Tuskaloosa gave his name to the city and county; it means Black Warrior. Football was abandoned at Alabama in 1898 when a (short-lived) ruling forbade teams ...

Did You Know? English settlers landed at Virginia Beach before moving on to found Jamestown (1607). The Old Cape Henry Lighthouse at Fort Story is the oldest federally funded lighthouse (1791). Guinness cites ...

Did You Know…? Washington’s cherry trees, 3,000 of them, were a gift from Tokyo’s mayor in 1912. President John Quincy Adams swam the Potomac in the buff; once, someone stole his clothes. In ...

Did You Know? The New World’s first log cabins, based on Finnish architecture, were built at Wilmington (1638). E. I. du Pont de Nemours came to Wilmington in 1802 to get away ...

Did You Know? Salem College is the oldest women’s college in the nation (1772). Salem Band, America’s oldest continually active brass band, began performing in 1778. Richard Joshua Reynolds, 25, launched R.J. Reynolds ...