Most obscure American city for its size

In My Humble Opinion
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The thread about the most obscure country for its size got me thinking about a thread from a few years ago on a message board I run, about the most obscure American cities for their size; pleases that have a much lower stature among American cities than their size would suggest, almost to the point where they’re forgotten. They almost never make the news, they have no iconic institutions, and many people in the country might not even know that the place actually exists. There are places where a fugitive might run to, because nobody would even think of looking for someone there.

A few that come to mind:

Greensboro, North Carolina. In the Rust Belt, where it seems like North Carolina is among the favorite destination of ex-pats, I’ve never heard the Triad area mentioned. It’s Charlotte, Raleigh, Charlotte, Cary, Charlotte, Asheville, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Charlotte, Wilmington, Charlotte, and Charlotte. Winston-Salem and Greensboro seem like the largest of the forgotten cities, and the North Carolina city witht he least amount of “buzz” outside of the state.

Rochester, New York. Kodak, Wegmans, and … uhh … it’s very, very middle class. Sharing the state with a behemoth like New York City, upstate New York cities are generally off the radar screen of most in the country. Buffalo gets some buzz for its professional sports, blizzards, odd regional foods, and Rust Belt struggles. Say “Rochester” to anyone, though, and they’ll probably think of a butler first before a city.

Wichita Falls, Texas. Among the fourth-tier Texas cities of Abeline, Waco, Tyler, College Station, and Beaumont, Wichita Falls is … well, I don’t know. The entire time I lived in Austin, I never heard the place mentioned once.

Farmington, New Mexico. It’s one of the largest cities in the state, behind Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe, but even New Mexicans seem unaware of its existence. It’s tucked away in the far northwestern part of the state, hours away from the Interstate system and any cities of a similar or larger size.

Medford, Oregon. I don’t know what else to say about it. When you think about cities in Oregon, lots of places come to mind: Portland, Bend, Salem, Eugene, and Corvallis. Medford is larger than many of the places I just mentioned, but I never think of it when thinking of Oregon. I’ve never heard anyone else mention it, either.

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Wichita Falls is a pretty modestly sized city.

Digging up a list of the biggest metro areas in the USA, the first one I find surprising is Virginia Beach/Norfolk. I was aware of the existence of that place, but really had no idea it was a large city. There’s a million and a half people there. Wow.

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I was surprised on a recent talk show when they mentioned San Antonio, Texas is the seventh largest US city.

I was actually there once for two nights - didn’t see much as I was on business - but what little I saw made me think this was some kind of mid-size, hick Texas town. I never hear much about San Antonio - but then again, I really don’t pay much attention to anything much that comes out of Texas. (Sorry if I offended any Texans…feel free to ignore Nevada.)

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Oh it’s got some history. From wiki -

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San Jose. 10th largest city in the USA. No TV shows were supposedly based out of SJ, whilst lesser burgs like Bakersfield have gotten the nod.

Sure, we have a decent song, but it is about how few people know how to get here. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Tulsa Oklahoma?
Oklahoma generally seems to ping weakly below the radar.

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“Cities” as in strict municipalities, or as in “metropolitan areas”? For example, “Boston” or “San Francisco” are not nearly as large as their overall contiguous metropolitan areas, which would include Cambridge with Boston and Oakland with SF. And a cities like Detroit have a significantly dense “ring” around them that center around Detroit but are not part of the city proper.

Going by the most recent data from the US Census’ “MSAs” (Metropolitan Statistical Areas), I’d say #12 is the highest ranking area I’d never heard of on its own: Riverside, CA. I know there’s a “UC-Riverside” in the University of California school system, but that’s about it. In the back of my mind I would have thought it was a “junior ancillary city” to Los Angeles in the way that Oakland is of San Francisco (which a Wikipedia lookup sort of confirms).

However I was surprised to learn that the Houston and Dallas MSAs both come in significantly higher than Miami, Boston or SF. I’ve always thought of them as reversed (i.e., that Boston, SF and Miami were 6+M in metro area population and Dallas/Houston around 4+M).

If we’re talking “city population” in the strict sense, If I look down the top 25 on the list, I must say I know nearly nothing about Jacksonville, FL (#11). I know they have an NFL team. That’s pretty much it. I thought I knew that it was about in the middle the panhandle of the state, but it turns out I was wrong about that (I was confusing it in my mental map of Florida, such as it is, with Tallahassee).

#15 - Columbus, Ohio - It used to host the AAA farm team for the NY Yankees for many years, so I’d see it in the sports columns as “XYZ was called up from AAA-Columbus”. And a silly game I used to play as a kid had a “truth or dare” type of card that involved doing something in the game, or “take the next bus to Columbus, Ohio” as an obviously out-of-the-question thing to do.

#16 - Fort Worth, Texas - I only know of this name as “where the airport for Dallas is located”.

#19 - El Paso, Texas - I can sing “Pass the old El Paso” in reference to the commercial for buying some kind of mediocre, mass-produced salsa dip in a jar. And it’s where the bank for the big heist was in “For A Few Dollars More”, the safe that was not in the vault…

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Yeah, but it’s not a surprise, is it? It’s got a population of under 500,000.

EDIT: I take that back, I recognize a lot of cities with a population of less than 500,000 on the list I cited earlier, like Tampa, FL, St. Louis, MO or way down the list, Orlando, FL (due to Disney World et al.). I’d imagine it’s more that there’s no larger Metropolitan Area around Tulsa like there is for those places, nor any major sports teams (though Oklahoma City now has an NBA team in the Thunder, having poached the Seattle Supersonics).

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I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Sacramento or Fresno, California other than the fact that Sacramento is the capital. They could be the same place for all I know. I can’t even picture where they are located without consulting a map.

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San Antonio is not a great place to vacation. There’s a riverwalk with a few good bars and restaurants and of course the Alamo. Other than that it’s kind of depressing. I hope it’s turned around but the last time I was there about 6 years ago at least 1/2 of the downtown storefronts were vacant and shuttered.

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Every city in Illinois except Chicago.

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My perspective:

Chicago bats way under for how big it is. Think about all the attention that NYC and LA get. The Chicago metro is only a couple million behind the LA metro, but they show up way less often in the media. Or, since LA is home to the entertainment industry, they show up way more than they should. Take your pick.

Philadelphia is poorly represented, but, it’s not really possible to call it “obscure.”

Riverside, CA? I can hardly tell you anything about it. But there it is, right below San Francisco on the list of MSAs. I do know some about UCSB and Rancho Cucamonga, but it’s way under San Francisco’s mindshare, for having a similar number of people.

Sacramento is the capitol of California…other than that…???

Virginia Beach? Who?

New Orleans is an interesting overachiever, sandwiched between American city also-rans like Oklahoma City, Raleigh, Richmond, and Buffalo.

Tulsa isn’t obscure in the objective sense but its fame doesn’t match with the demographic of this site - not many Dopers seem to care about petroleum or Oral Roberts.

I think the most obscure city for its size out of the top ~75 is any of Chicago, Riverside, or Virginia Beach.

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I was kind of shocked when I saw El Paso at #19 in that list. I just assumed it was some small cow town out in West Texas. I had no idea it was bigger than Memphis, Boston, Seattle, Denver, or Baltimore (the next five in the list).

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Columbus is the capital of Ohio. It’s very sprawling, land-wise. It’s got a decent population and a higher population density than a few of the more highly-populated cities above it (Phoenix, Jacksonville, Austin, Indianapolis, San Antonio).

But I don’t know that Columbus has an identity. Cleveland does, Cincinnati does. They both have sports teams and stuff. I’ve been to Columbus many times and know lots of people who live there but I could never say “Oh, that’s so Columbus.” People from Cincy and Cleveland even have accents. I wouldn’t say that people from Columbus do.

Then again all of the people I know who live in Columbus are from Cleveland, so I don’t really know any native Columbus-ers.

Columbus is just sort of big, there, and meh.

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Try being Yonkers, which actually borders NYC. Despite being the 4th largest municipality in the state with nearly 200,000 people, it’s in an absolute dead zone, in part because it’s New Yorkers’ most convenient example of Nowheresville.

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I’d say San Antonio - it’s only 200k smaller than Philadelphia, which is the 5th largest city behind Houston, and about 120k larger than Dallas at #9, but everyone knows about Dallas.

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You have to look at MSA’s for fair comparisons on that, The Dallas area is larger than Houston now and the 4th largest in the country. It is sprawl central though and I know because much of my family lives there. I am always careful when I am there and ask them how far something is. ‘Right down the road’ could mean a twenty minute drive on the interstate and ‘across town’ can mean an hour and a half and 50+ miles. Dallas/Fort Worth/Grapevine/Arlington/Irving/Plano just morphed into a mutant mega-city. It isn’t New York City however because there is too much space. Downtown Dallas has a skyline but it is odd because there is hardly anything at ground level going on especially after 5:00 pm weeknights.

I think most people know San Antonio because of the Alamo (I don’t thing most people know the Alamo is right next to a strip of chain stores today). It isn’t all that well known overall but not obscure. I would nominate Charlotte, NC for the largest obscure large city in America. It is huge but most people have either no idea it is a big city at all or only know it as a banking headquarters.

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Jacksonville, FL - nothing happens there
Anchorage, AK - people know it’s this city on the Pacific ocean and maybe it’s kind of cold there, but what else do people know? Can you name even one landmark?
San Juan, PR - the Spanish speaking metropolis

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I’ll nominate a couple from the Northwest;

**Boise ID - **Third-largest city in the Northwest, after Seattle and Portland (but not the third-largest MSA). Often confused with Des Moines IA for some reason. Said to be the most remote capital city in the 48 contiguous, in terms of distance to another major city (~400 miles to either Salt Lake City or Portland). Gets neither notoriaty nor respect. They do have a pretty impressive college football team.

Spokane WA - Surprisingly, the second-largest city in Washington state (but also well-down on the MSA list). Hardly any claim to fame, except that it might be the place where Butch Cassidy lived in obscurity until 1933. Oh, and quite probably the most obscure place to ever host a World’s fair - Expo '74.
SS

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Unlike a lot of cities, the municipal boundaries of Virginia Beach stretches far and wide way into farm country, all the way to the North Carolina state line.