[radpanda]

As a native Marylander I always find myself forgetting about Cumberland, which is a shame. As someone who has mostly lived in and around Baltimore, you head west to Frederick (aka Fredneck) for the small city in the middle of rural farmland. If you keep heading west you get to Hagerstown which feels way out there in farm country. And if you keep heading west you eventually move from farms to mountains and you hit Cumberland, which looks like a city that time forgot.

As other folks have commented, there’s some beautiful architecture and the old part of the city seems like it could be a bustling place. There’s a train station and easy access to the great outdoors. But the jobs have long gone and drug addiction has taken root for so many there. I don’t know the best way to revive a place like that but I hope something eventually works.

[devchix]

And if you travel farther west on 70, you'll eventually reach Wheeling, WVA. At one time its position on the Ohio river and near railroads made it a transportation hub, it made money in iron, textile, and logging - they used to float logs down the river. The vestige of wealth is still visible in its architecture, beautiful brick homes, ornate porches, windows and roofs. It's this glimmer into this past, not so far in the distance, that is so sad to witness. A lot of the town has fallen into disrepair, not slum exactly, but heading there. There is a central market building with some kitschy arts and crafts, and food stalls that supply tour buses. The buses come for Wheeling Island Casino, which has one of the last two remaining greyhound racetracks in the US. There's some attempt at preserving the historic buildings and downtown. People keep leaving, and the tourist attractions are more of a detour stop than a destination point. There used to be a pie stall - best pies in the US, handmade, fresh ingredients, $15, baked to order by a retired teacher. He sold the shop, his kids didn't want it, it was too much work and they made more money doing other things.

[nunez]

I drove by Wheeling on my way to Texas from Maine. Literally looked like a city that was one great but is now dying. Very sad stuff. Apparently they are revitalizing downtown though.

[stackskipton]

Sure, but problem Cumberland has same problem as rest of Appalachia, it's geography isn't very good. Mountain areas make everything 10x times harder to build.

Let's say some big software company wanted to build second HQ. Even if Cumberland was attractive in workforce, education options and so forth, the architects would say "Building your HQ2 is going to be rough. There isn't enough flat land, flooding could be problematic, fiber companies are screaming about the trenching" Not to mention, where are you going to put all your workers since housing will run into same problem. So if you wanted to stay in MD, somewhere like Hagerstown or Salisbury would be a better choice since usable land is plentiful.

[AlotOfReading]

If there was an economy worth building for, the geography wouldn't be a blocker. Look at Seattle, Oakland, or the Hollywood hills. They're all built on rugged, mountainous terrain just as difficult as the Appalachians, but they don't suffer the same issues attracting wealth because their economic situation is so different. In fact, each of them has the opposite problem of demand to build vastly outstripping permission to build.

[stackskipton]

>Look at Seattle, Oakland, or the Hollywood hills. They're all built on rugged, mountainous terrain just as difficult as the Appalachians, but they don't suffer the same issues attracting wealth because their economic situation is so different.

Wrong. Seattle, Oakland and Los Angeles are mostly built on much flatter parts of those areas. California entire geography is about "Hey, check out these massive valleys or coastal land we can build in." Same thing with Washington State, Seattle is in between Cascades and Olympics where there is all this flat land to build on. Yes, they running out of land and building into mountains now. That problem is like having FAANG scaling problems. It sucks but it's good/manageable problem to have and you have massive checkbooks to help solve it.

Have you been to Appalachia? It's not on the coast and does not have these benefits. If you want to compare it to West Coast areas, it's more like Sierra Nevada. Inland Mountains with only small valleys to build infrastructure in.

[AlotOfReading]

I've been to Appalachia. It didn't strike me as notably more rugged than any other reasonably hilly area, and quite a bit less rugged than many places known for it (e.g. the Alpine cities, or the Himalayas). The west coast cities were a reasonable comparison, because they're (1) in the same country and (2) Fairly comparable in elevation and grade, if not a bit worse. The oakland hills (and other bay area communities [1]) rise to comparable heights despite starting at sea level with 25% grades, for example. Queen Anne in Seattle [2] has almost exactly the same elevation gain, but the last 200 feet are basically a cliff. I'm not picking distant suburbs here, but rather historic parts of these areas that have been developed for almost a century. They only maintain the illusion of flatness now because the landscape has been intensively modified over that time to appear less severe.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Sausalit...

[2] https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/9...

[stackskipton]

Instead of just a few pictures showing rich area around a mountain that can afford it because companies like Apple have plenty of flat area, let's use available data provided by government agencies: https://topochange.cr.usgs.gov/topochange_viewer/viewer.htm

Cumberland, MD vs San Francisco. Wow, when I overlay urban areas of Bay Area, it's heavily built up in much flatter areas and gets much less dense as elevation change gets steeper. Not to mention, sea access gives you massive advantage since you are not having to move as much over really tall mountains.

Cumberland, MD has none of these. It's in a valley between two larger ridges of mountains but is heavily constrained. Also, not having sea access means transporting goods there is much more difficult and requires more infrastructure. And since we are one nation, you could just move west to much flatter Ohio and Great Lakes or East to flat parts of Maryland and Chesapeake Bay.

Sure, Bay area built up with creating really excellent schools that created really high paying industries but thinking it was "We lifted ourselves up by our bootstraps" and instead "Our geography and World War with Navy on our coast desperate to win really did help us."

[AlotOfReading]

I'm saying nothing about bootstrapping. What I'm saying is that difficult geography is not a blocker if the economics are sufficient. People built and regraded the hills around Oakland, Seattle, and LA because the economy was there first. The geography is an expensive inconvenience no one wants to deal with, not an unmanageable fact of life.

[alephnerd]

> built on much flatter parts of those areas

Seattle was MADE flat by literally using fire hoses to flatten hills and mountains [0].

That said, I disagree with the role geography has with developing a tech industry - most of it can be directly related to investment put during WW2 and the 1950s into innovation clusters.

For example, Seattle and aerospace (Boeing), Bay Area and computers+electronics+nukes (HP, IBM Almaden, LLNL, LLBL, Los Alamos managed by UCB), San Diego and Biotech+Defense Tech (Salk Lab, Navy), Portland and electronics (INL, PNNL, Tektronics, Intel), etc

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle

[lizknope]

I saw an interactive exhibit at Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle. It showed how different sections were regraded and you could push buttons where that section of hills and lakes would get lifted or dropped down. This wasn't a computer display, this was a real physical model of the city.

The Bay Area really benefits from Stanford and Berkeley being there. You need a steady stream of educated new grads to grow from.

[alephnerd]

> Museum of History & Industry

Love that museum. Paul Allen really made Seattle such a great city - amazing museums, good sports, amazing biotech research, strong entrepreneurship scene. It's like Boston but better.

> Bay Area really benefits from Stanford and Berkeley

Also UCSF (major biotech hub) and SJSU (major electronics hub - imo EE@SJSU makes EE@Stanford look like child's play).

[dullcrisp]

But people live there already. Couldn’t they be prosperous without a big software company building its headquarters there?

[lotsofpulp]

>I don’t know the best way to revive a place like that but I hope something eventually works.

You don’t. Times change, and what used to provide utility may no longer provide utility, and the only option is to move on.