Why is the area where you live/your town so special?

Date sort Score sort
Quote:
I remember there was some kind of susense /creepy movie that mention Bartow Fl and some other little towns.We used to live down there and it creeped me out.

yeah..it was kinda creepy, and cool also... we go to the Quabbin all the time (its Bostons drinking water supply, and it IS a beautiful place, all wooded area, and hiking trails and tons of deer and awesome fishing for the boys....back in the 30's or earlier, they evacuated 3 or 4 small local towns....and flooded them for Bostons water supply...it is literally a 5 minute drive from my house...when i worked in the local nursing homes alot of the residents there would tell me stories about how they lived in one of the towns they flooded and how on the last night, they had a great dance/ball for everyone..pretty cool stuff..
 
The South Mountains are an ancient and deeply eroded mountain range in western North Carolina. They are an isolated remnant of the much larger Appalachian Mountains to the west, and are separated from the Appalachians by the Catawba River valley. The range covers approximately 100,000 acres in Burke, Cleveland, and Rutherford counties. The South Mountains are the highest and most rugged chain of the isolated mountain ranges which dot North Carolina's Piedmont region.
The mountains were once inhabited by the Cherokee Indian tribe; after gold was discovered in the mountains in the 1800s numerous prospectors moved into the area, and by the time the mines closed in the early 1900s over $1 million in gold had been found. Today the mountains are sparsely populated, and no communities of more than a few hundred people are located in the immediate region (the largest nearby city is Morganton, North Carolina, located five miles north of the range). Most of the South Mountains remain in the hands of private owners.

We own a mere 13 acres of the South Mountains...but I love the fact that we are in such a remote area of "wilderness". Oh, and our area was once a news story due to Old Knobby, the resident Big Foot.
 
Lets see.. In the shadows of Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens. The worlds largest park (Forest Park) and smallest park (Mills End Park) within a cities limits. As well as the only US city built on a volcano (Mount Tabor which I live a few blocks away from).

Bridges including the Saint John's Bridge which was a prototype for the Golden Gate and the architect/engineer of both bridges confessed the Saint Johns was his favorite of all his bridges.

A safe,clean (people actually yell at litterers round here) and lively downtown district, as well many sub-districts (Hawthorn, Selwood, Mississippi etc). Each with it's own character.

Cities power and water are low impact (hydro for the power and our water is snow melt).

We've also got one of the best public transportation systems in the country. Coupled with the biggest bicycling population in the country.

Active arts community featuring a lot of public art (our old mayor-Bud Clark- was the flasher featured in the famous "expose yourself to art" poster).

And only an hour to two hours drive to the ocean, into the mountains, the plains of the valley, or the high desert in Eastern Oregon.

No sales Tax.

Limited suburban sprawl. Unlike most cities that deteriorate at the core and people just keep building new burbs, local legislation makes this difficult, so bad neighborhoods end up getting reinvented. Though this policy is highly debated in local politics, but being one that moved here from the urban blight of Detroit Michigan, I really like it.

And there is no place prettier in the spring/early summer. The whole city is in bloom. We're not nicknamed the Rose city for nothing.

Though this year was an exception, mild winters and mild summers. Though you pay for it with months of drizzle.

Brew pubs a plenty, and one of the best regions in the world for the Pinot grape. After all a local beer gave us the term Blitzed.

Year round gardening, most all orchard trees do well here. And lets not forget our city allows chickens.

Also we've got weird and interesting cast of characters that make up our local history, and this tradition continues.
 
Very interesting histories from you guys. I know there is a lot of history here but I think the most famous is that I live in the Racing Capitol of the World!
 
Quote:
I remember there was some kind of susense /creepy movie that mention Bartow Fl and some other little towns.We used to live down there and it creeped me out.

was that "Palmetto" with woody harleson and elizabeth shue?


Alaska is cool cause its the last frontier..... and it just snowed amost a foot and a half yesterday!!!! that makes alaska COOL!!!
 
When I read the question, history did not immediately come to mind. However, Saginaw and Bay City, Michigan (my closest towns) are both on the Saginaw River. There's alot of history revolving around the lumbering days in the 1800s. We have a great number of historic mansions and larger homes in our area.
Currently, there is a downturn in population, due to the issues with the auto industry. Overall, people in mid-Michigan are alot of fun. Bay City, in particualr, is known for all its festivals, parades, races and concerts. I have lived all over the Midwest & have never seen a small town with so much to do.
 
Quote:
I grew up in mid-Michigan (west of Saginaw on M-46). It's a nice area, but not as close to the lakeshore as I would like. Unfortunately, the Saginaw Bay still has a long way to go before I would swim in it. The people are great...very laid-back, fun, outdoorsy, and know how to have a good time.
 
I live in the Blue Ridge Mountain range of WV. Other than a whole lot of Civil War history of which I know nothing about, we have a lot of reasons this place is special. We have many beautiful parks and scenic tourist attractions.

Why do I find it special?

Air like diamonds and water like cool crystal~full of trout, wildlife in abundance and 40 mile views of big, blue mountains.

No urban sprawl...actually no urban anything.

Silent nights full of stars, like holes in the floor of Heaven.

Big, fluffy white clouds with purple bottoms that cast shadows on the mountainsides.

Big, green valleys, an autumn blaze of glory, misty, snowy winters.

Spring lambs and calves playing in the deep, green grass! We've got everything but the ocean.

No property restrictions, low taxes, clean living and always something to look at....that's my home.
love.gif
 
Quote:
thumbsup.gif
I live an hour away from Beekissed on the other side of all these Mts. Beautiful Cheat Mts. range, Monongahela National Forest, Snowshoe Ski Resort, Canaan Valley Ski Resort on the other side of me, lots of Civil War battlefields to explore, Cass Senic Railroad is close as are some other rails to ride. Pearl S. Buck birthplace is close, so is the National Radio Observatory Astronomy.
 
Oh, gosh. I live in the mega-historic home of a local colonist who founded a couple of towns around here after leaving this house to his daughter and her hubby. Said colonist happened to be Sir Isaac Newton's nephew. Or maybe it was great-nephew? Something like that. His family graves are still in town. He came here to set up a farm, but only succeeded in growing rocks.
lol.png
He kept sheep and started a sawmill instead. Made a lot of money from that, as we had plenty of good hardwood oak. There's a few still standing.

A couple of the men who lived in this house, and many people around this area, fought in the Revolutionary War. My neighbors' homes now stand on a farm awarded to one of the Salem Witch Trial victims as compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned. The sawmills mostly supplied war materiel during the Civil War, although a neighboring town supplied a lot of soldiers and was actually named "Unionville" at the time in honor of their Civil War vets.

Other than that, we used the local river power to run various types of mills through the 1800s and early 1900s. Textiles were big around here, we've got good pasture for sheep. Late 1800s, everything was shipped through here by rail and there are still a lot of renovated public houses and inns along the rail lines (which are still used, albeit updated versions).

In the early 1900s, HP Lovecraft set most of his short stories in this area of Massachusetts. About 30 minutes up the road is Concord, MA, where lots of intellectuals and writers lived: HD Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott & her sister Abigail, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Winthrop.

Concord grapes were developed here, as were several types of apples, broccoli, squash.

Now it's special because it's Biotech Land. A lot of huge biotech, pharma and healthcare companies are in nearby cities, and this is a bedroom community for folks who work in the city and commute. Most of us are science geeks, there's quite a good concentration of brains and innovation here. If healthcare was revolutionized tomorrow, we'd be making each other coffee in the kitchen and brainstorming together. We're pretty close to the biggest of big-name universities in the US--Harvard, MIT, Yale.

We are also notoriously picky about our green space. Our neighboring towns are all over-built and their infrastructure is terrible because they didn't control growth. They now have a bunch of empty storefronts and office buildings uglifying their towns, on top of a water/sewage plant that can't service its inhabitants and companies. We, in comparison, are really snotty about growth and make developers' lives a misery, but our water and electric are extremely reliable, houses still sell at close to their appraised value even in this horrible market, and we've got tons of parkland, preservation land, open space, and places where you can see the stars at night. We have plenty of endangered species living in our wetlands, and it's a fine thing to hear the spring frogs croaking, see the stars, and hear the turtles calling their mates in May. Plus, we have our own reservoirs so we don't need the Quabbin.

We also know our neighbors. This is a rare thing in modern America, apparently, but we know them and their dogs by name and often stop by to say hi.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom