What are the least beautiful places you ever visited?

[kwassa]

Many parts of the NE corridor as viewed from Amtrak.

The rather scary parts of Baltimore, quite close to the train museum.

Large sections of Detroit.

Oil refineries in New Jersey.

What are yours?

[lapfog_1]

1. allentown, pa

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

52. Makes me think of this.

[Watchfoxheadexplodes]

2. Missouri farm land of the south east area

Upstate south Carolina

The isolated areas of the Louisiana bayou.

[dawg]

48. Upstate South Carolina? Are you joking?

[nolabear]

95. The isolated areas of the Louisiana bayous???

Buddy...

[Aristus]

3. Eastern Kentucky.

A squalid, muddy hellhole.

I suppose at one time its lush forests and rambling hills were beautiful. But now, the place is ugly, uninviting, dirty, and depressing.

I visited the region when I was in the Army and part of a funeral detail for a veteran who had lived in the hill country in the extreme east of the state. It was the kind of place where you more or less expected Snuffy Smith to jump out at you from behind a boulder, brandishing a blunderbuss.

I realize that the region's condition is largely due to the grinding, oppressive poverty that hangs over the place like a cloud. But I can't help reflecting that the people there are eager participants in their own economic oppression. If they can get together to end the clear-cutting of their forests and the explosive destruction of their once-lovely hills, maybe they can turn it around.

[steve2470]

75. The book "Hillbilly Elegy" speaks to your point at length nt

[Aristus]

76. I read an excerpt from it online.

And I was planning to borrow it from the library to read in full. Then I found it that it is very popular with conservatives, and reconsidered.

Evidently, it seems to validate right-wing beliefs about welfare cheats, even though the subjects are white people who vote Republican.

[lark]

4. El Paso TX 40 years ago and the state of KS.

Going through there during rush hour traffic 40 years ago, so driving slow, it looked like one giant slum for miles and miles and miles, so dirty, poor and hopeless looking. Hope things have improved a lot since then.

KS, also 40 years ago. It was just so bleak and dried up looking, even the cars were really bad. Never will go to either place again if I can avoid them. I don't remember seeing anything nice in the whole state.

[fifthoffive]

16. El Paso, TX two years ago. n/m

[woodsprite]

5. Marcus Hook, PA n/t

[jberryhill]

31. Hey!

What's not to like?

[woodsprite]

43. I was thinking specifically of all the refineries.

My Aunt lived there for years, right across the street from the Marcus Hook Baptist Church. My dad was a fire protection engineer and designed the fire protection systems that a lot of the Marcus Hook refineries used.

[jberryhill]

33. True story

Years and years ago, I was at a comedy club in Wilmington and the comedian was absolutely dying.

There was a loud "boom" somewhere outside, and he asked, "What was that?"

Someone in the audience said "Marcus Hook."

And the comedian says, "Marcus Hook? Does he blow up a lot or something?"

The audience started laughing, and the comedian thought he was onto something, but he didn't realize that everyone was laughing at him thinking Marcus Hook was a place instead of a person.

[malchickiwick]

6. The Lobby of any Trump Tower would be, I assume, but ...

... having never set foot inside, I can't say I've ever actually visited. We do have one where I live and it stands there in the skyline like a disgusting gold brick.

[First Speaker]

7. North Street, Baltimore...

...passed thru it a few years ago. Looked like an atom bomb had hit it. It's too bad, since I love so much of Baltimore...

[rzemanfl]

8. Gary, Indiana in the 1950's. Chicago Stockyards area during the same era. n/t

[OregonBlue]

29. I gotta agree with you there. Only it was later. In the early 70's. Abandoned cars.

Everything rusted, old mattresses everywhere, all the old houses falling down and broken out windows, etc. It was really depressing. Coming from Seattle I had a hard time believing it was America.

[rzemanfl]

40. I was just a kid in the '50s, the smells were brutal. n/t

[Burma Jones]

42. I was born in Gary, August 1959

Took my son through there on a Midwest College Visit tour 4 years ago. I asked him to make sure he thanked my Father the next time he saw him for getting the hell out of Gary.

It was about as bleak a place as I've ever seen, complete with yet another failed Trump Casino.

[rzemanfl]

44. Not long after you were born my father got transfered out of Chicago to Milwaukee.

I stayed in Wisconsin until I moved to Florida twenty-one years ago.

[Awsi Dooger]

46. Gary, Indiana was my first thought

My name is Gary so I was excited to visit the first time. Then once I saw it I was almost embarrassed. Mostly I wanted to get out of there.

I went back a decade or so later and it matched my initial impression. That was 1981 and I haven't been back since.

Good handicapping in this thread because other cities that came to mind quickly have also been mentioned -- Detroit and El Paso, along with some of the dull stretches to drive like eastern Kansas and much of Wyoming.

[phylny]

96. Close enough to my thought:

East Chicago, Indiana.

We lived in Munster and my husband worked in East Chicago. It was not pleasant there.

[Liberal Veteran]

9. Atlantic City.

I was totally unimpressed when I visited this spot. Gaudy hotels and casinos surrounded by slums.

[Bantamfancier]

14. My choice too.

One block off the boardwalk and it's a war zone.

[randr]

10. The State of Missouri

I admit I have only passed through on the I-70. No rest stops and trash, enormous amounts, covered the road side.

[Freddie]

11. Rode Amtrak from Philly to Florida once

Expecting some scenery, it was 90% weeds and the backs of buildings. A couple downtowns were nice.

[malthaussen]

71. If you'd ever done the commute from the Philly suburbs...

... into the city, this would not surprise you. Really bleak.

-- Mal

[jberryhill]

78. I did the SEPTA R2 from Wilmington for over a decade

Nothing like starting your day with a stop at the "Chester Transportation Center".

[Generic Brad]

12. Tijiuana

I went there for dinner one night back in the 80's. The homeless, the poverty, the hustlers - it felt dystopian.

[tonyt53]

13. Southern Arkansas, most of Kansas, Gary/Hammond, IN

[CanonRay]

15. West Texas. Anywhere.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

17. Chennai, India

Filthy! Incredible poverty. The stench is overwhelming. People urinate and defecate openly in the streets.

[Thyla]

18. Benidorm in Spain is pretty hideous looking...

In fact the Spanish have a knack at turning beautiful locations into horrible ticky tacky. And Alicante is stuck in an awful 70's art deco nightmare.

Also the industrial north in France, Belgium and Netherlands is a bit rough and there are certainly parts of Brussles that I would not venture to again.

[TuxedoKat]

97. Driving south of Madrid

along the coast of Spain. Very dry and mountainous, no trees, or much green vegetation, very rocky, brown and ugly. On the return though at night, driving inland we could smell orange groves perfuming the air, too bad it was dark. I'm sure it would have been lovely.

[kwassa]

98. This area makes me think that the Spanish conquistadors ....

must have been quite comfortable in California when they first colonized it.

Similar climate and appearance.

[Sinistrous]

19. Phoenix, AZ

Everything is brown. And the HEAT!!!!

[GeorgeHayduke]

54. I love PHX!

It takes some getting used to, but some places are really lovely. And I'm an outdoorsy guy from tge mountains of the Northwest.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

20. Middletown, New Jersey.

Which isn't a slum by any conventional means of the word. It's considered a middle class bedroom community for New York.

But for whatever reason when I was there, I just found it to be utterly soulless and joyless....just stretches of sprawled up boulevards filled with traffic lights where you couldn't even turn left.

Of course, the fact I associate it with an ex-girlfriend might have something to do with my feelings about it. And the fact that I visited in the dead of winter when it was cold and icy and everything was dead and brown.

I also found Las Vegas to be incredibly tacky and cheesy beyond redemption both times I've been there.

[crazycatlady]

50. Middletown's incredibly red tooo

I was just on the train through there today.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. Reno. What a tacky mess.

[nocalflea]

30. The tackiness is it's charm.

[cemaphonic]

38. Reno does have that beautiful mountain backdrop though

Aberdeen/Hoquiam WA is pretty dismal. The usual rural poverty, plus a grimy decaying waterfront, plus a degree of cloud cover and rain that makes Seattle look like San Diego.

[Bayard]

22. Definitely El Paso

Bakersfield, CA, where the entry from the north is all oil fields. Fresno, coming in from the West.

Cleveland, OH, from what I saw

The side of Chicago I was lost in once, going between Minneapolis where I was living, back home to Louisville. Pulled over to look at a map, and a cop pulled up behind me and said--follow me, I'm going to lead you out of here NOW.

[Wwcd]

27. Similar wrong turn, late night driving thru Birmingham, 1978

We ended up down in the middle of the hell-hole, needed gas but just kept driving as locals approached our car with the MN license plates

We were high so that miggt have added to the paranoia.
But yes it was as far into inner city as I had ever been. Dark lit streets, trash, stench, & bars on every window.
I have no idea where in Birmingham we actually were.
We had a map but GPS sure would have been welcome back then.

[GeorgeGist]

23. E. St. Louis

Cairo,IL
Grand Rapids, MI
Erie, PA
Gary, IN
Dayton,OH
Frankfort,KY
Valdosta, GA

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

24. Zug Island, Detroit

Not what I envision for "island life"

[jrandom421]

25. Killeen Texas

The only place that made me wish I was in Xuan Loc Vietnam. At least in Xuan Loc, I had an M-79 grenade launcher to use on targets of opportunity, and I could call in artillery, helos and close air support strikes on anything bigger.

In Killeen, I could only drive the speed limit, and get the hell out of town as fast as I could

[Jack-o-Lantern]

26. As a Michigander I know about the industrial hell-hole Zug Island is,

however that photo is stunning. I couldn’t stop looking at it in its abstract beauty.

[dhol82]

28. Section of Philly that I grew up in in

Hadn’t been there in fifty years and decided to drive and have a look.
Burned out houses, obvious crack dens, boarded up windows.
It was so sad.

[malthaussen]

74. Sounds like Olney...

... but there are so many parts of Philly that would match that description, it's hard to say.

-- Mal

[dhol82]

79. Wow! Bingo.

Actually Fern Rock but close enough.
When I was a kid it was a really nice blue collar area.

[malthaussen]

81. Had a lady friend who lived in the area in the 50's...

... her street fully matched your description in the 70's. Since I went to Temple, I got a daily dose of the best North Philly could offer.

-- Mal

[nocalflea]

32. The dump in Sonoma Co. .

Beautiful location actually, but the dump was truly ugly.

[3catwoman3]

34. Looked out the fuselage window...

...at the Midland-Odessa TX airport in 1977, on a connecting flight to Colorado Springs. Nothing to see except flat and brown everything.

[Corvo Bianco]

35. The I-80 stretch of Wyoming is repulsive.

Both for the scenery and the residents you have to converse with whilst passing through.

[wasupaloopa]

36. The agricultural areas around Bakersfield, CA

It is the area that Steinbeck wrote about in Grapes of Wrath.

The Weed Patch Camp is still there in Arvin, CA. It was called Wheat Patch in the movie. The scene In the movie where they Joads hit a bump coming into the camp is next to the old Weed Patch post office. It was an office in the movie. The building still stands today. Every October they celebrate Dust Bowl Days at Weed Patch.

The Weed Patch school is still in operation down the road. It was started by the Kern County school superintendent in the 30's because the Bakersfield schools did not want the migrant children coming to city schools. The school taught things like airplane mechanics so the children had a skill instead of remaining migrants.

The families in Bakersfield wanted to send their kids to Weed Patch School because they could get a better education there.

I worked for a while in the Arvin city offices. The mayor then was Hispanic and he told me that half of the residents are undocumented. Now instead of coming from the dust bowl the migrants come from Mexico. They are still as poor as the migrants in the 30's and still treated poorly. But Arvin is a slice of Mexico in the USA.

I also was the controller of the largest farm labor contractor in the San Joaquin Valley. We had 3,000 on the payroll every week.

I also applied to the United Farm Workers, in Keen up the 58 hwy, headquarters as an accountant but they could not pay enough for me to pay my bills.

The area is dirty and dusty and Arvin has some of the dirtiest air in CA because the pollution from LA gets trapped up against the mountains and hangs over Arvin.

[fierywoman]

37. Mestre, Italy

[askyagerz]

39. Every oilfield I've ever seen or worked in

Rural parts of the south, decomposing neighborhoods in the industrial cities and lets say Kansas, just because it's the longest and most boring state to drive through

[The Polack MSgt]

41. Uhhhmmm, No. Seriously, no place in the USA

Makes my top 10 - not even close...

I had a pretty comprehensive, if non-voluntary travel plan between 2002 and 2004 that put a metric ton of perspective in my mind.

The worst part of the most depressed Compass Town (North Little Rock, East St Louis, West Memphis etc etc) in America compares well to any part of Afghanistan in 2002.

After 90 years of Soviet and Russian occupation, Turkmenistan (except the show case section of Ashgabat) is a severely polluted poverty stricken wasteland. Run by a dynasty of maniacs BTW...

People in West Pakistan, Djibouti, Iraq, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan would dream of projects in Baltimore as a leap forward. I ain't Johnny Cash, I have NOT been every where, but I've been to all those places...

I know it's just the Lounge, but, holy fuck people - get outside and take a look

[KPN]

82. Winning entry!

[hlthe2b]

91. Yes.. I'm with you... Travel the world (esp the so-called "undeveloped" nations)

That said, I can find beauty in people, their spirit, their art, their humanity--no matter their circumstances or environment.

[bettyellen]

45. The suburbs of Moscow between the airport and city, so dismal.

[steve2470]

72. In 1989 they were very bleak nt

[rsdsharp]

47. 16 hours in Needles, California, in August 1962.

We were on a train from LA to the Grand Canyon when a derailment up ahead forced us to stop in Needles. We were told it would only be a few minutes. It wasn't. We had no food (and no dining car). Half the cars used their ice for air conditioning. The other half, including ours, used it for cold water. It was 116 degrees.

It wasn't Hell, but it was just outside the gates.

[COLGATE4]

49. Buffalo, NY

[TheSmarterDog]

61. Ugly, ugly Buffalo, NY

http://www.onlyinyourstate.com/new-york/buffalo/20-most-beautiful-places-buffalo/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellicott_Square_Building

http://www.newyorkupstate.com/buffalo/2017/09/architectural_digest_names_buffalo_school_most_beautiful_in_ny.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_Park%E2%80%93Front_Park_System

[Alpeduez21]

94. What..........a s**thole

[applegrove]

51. When i was a kid we went to a family reunion along the St Lawrence River.

We stayed at a motel that was near a plant or factory of some kind. It stank to high ****. It was also by the river and the water stank too. Bad place for a motel.

[Shrike47]

53. I-80 through southern Idaho.

[cloudbase]

55. Haiti

Port Sudan
Beira, Mozambique
A village of squatters along a canal outside of Manila
Donaldsonville, LA

[dhol82]

80. Visited Haiti in 1970

Vowed I would never go back.
It was just too depressing.

[Raster]

56. Fresno.

[hunter]

57. Any of the larger dairy operations in California's Central Valley.

On a hot humid summer day, the air still, everything about these places makes a person want to die. It's suffocating. No green hillsides at all. It can't be any different for the cows. Just as soon as their "productive" lives end they are killed and turned into meat. If they knew that they might look forward to it.

Wherever people live it's always possible to find beauty so I don't consider human communities "least beautiful." There are many places here in the U.S.A. very similar to the backsides of Tijuana or the rougher neighborhoods of India. I live within walking distance of a large homeless encampment. The dry creek running through it is an open sewer now that it has rained. But there's art in there, and music, and stories.

Strip mining is ugly. Factory farms are ugly, especially meat and dairy. Square mile after square mile of monoculture industrial agriculture is ugly.

People may be forced into ugly situations, but most people are not ugly. In the darkest places there will be light.

[Bayard]

65. I think they finally outlawed the lagoons in CA

The big dairy operations would have lakes filled with waste, solid and liquid. You could not drive thru there with your windows down. The worst thing though is when you could see the tiny cages they stuffed calves into to produce veal.

[gladium et scutum]

58. Port Au Prince, Haiti

[gladium et scutum]

59. In addition to

Port Au Prince, Bandar Abbas Iran, Kaohsiung Taiwan, and Karachi Pakistan make my list for the least beautiful places I have visited.

[sinkingfeeling]

60. Oklahoma. Smells like oil.

[jalan48]

62. Sudbury, Ontario

[Laffy Kat]

64. All states have their ugly side.

Most of Mississippi, except the coast; most of Oklahoma. Also, Commerce City, Colorado (cough, cough). Seriously, I used to have to commute around Commerce City every single day and would almost always have an asthma attack.

[Zorro]

66. Camden, New Jersey

Flew in to the Philadelphia airport one winter evening about 20 years ago, took a wrong turn after crossing the bridge on the way to my hotel in Cherry Hill, and found myself in a neighborhood out of a dystopian movie.

Burning 55 gallon drums on the street corners, seedy looking guys sitting on the steps of once lovely but now abandoned row houses, strangely clothed characters walking along the streets, etc.

I've been in tough places all around the world, but that place was really unnerving. And it's so very unfortunate, since the Philadelphia skyline across the river at night is a really pretty view.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

67. I've never been there but...

...I here Monrovia isn't really a honeymoon hot spot:

[llmart]

68. Indiana

flat, pig farms and cornfields for miles of driving boredom.

Detroit and Cleveland

[malthaussen]

69. Open pit quarry...

,,, with a stagnant pond at the bottom filled with rusty trash. Used to be the local swimming hole, don't know how any of us survived.

-- Mal

[steve2470]

70. 1978 burned-out parts of South Bronx NYC nt

[steve2470]

73. 1973 New Castle PA nt

[Bleacher Creature]

77. Everywhere in Florida without a view of the ocean. NT

[steve2470]

85. Hey! I get your point but I would submit...

that having a nice view of a lake, pond (as I do) or river is pretty nice also.

[Bleacher Creature]

86. Fair point.

I'm mostly talking about the huge areas of flat ground that's either barren or filled with cheap looking houses and/or strip malls.

And I do realize that people live there, and I am sorry for not being sensitive to that fact.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

87. .....

?itok=lH15hc68

(Of course, if you're talking about Disney World and the surrounding tourist traps, I'll concur 100%)

[Bleacher Creature]

88. OK, I'm not above admitting when I'm wrong.

It does seem like the most beautiful places are those near a body of water, and I'll readily admit that I'm talking mostly about the areas that are just one strip mall after another.

Apologies!!

[KPN]

83. Soweto 1977.

[eissa]

84. CA highway 99 between Bakersfield and Sacramento n/t

[Kali]

89. every tan/beige stucco and tile-roofed developement blight in Arizona

effing cancers. and they think cows are bad!

[Paladin]

90. The massive ghettos, covering the mountains around Lima, Peru.

It's been years ago since I saw them, and I'd like to think things are better for all those poor people. But I've seen enough of the world not to get my hopes up.

[BluesRunTheGame]

92. The Walt Whitman Truck Stop in Philly.

The whole neighborhood really. Prostitutes lining the streets on the way in (in broad daylight). Fuel desk behind bullet proof glass. They tore it down a few years ago.

[BluesRunTheGame]

93. Cowschwitz aka Harris Ranch