What's the largest U.S. city you've never heard of?

#78 Hialea, Florida 226,401

http://www.demographia.com/db-uscity98.htm

if someone who knows how to link can make a link for me.

127 Killeen--Temple, TX MSA

http://www.citymayors.com/features/euro_cities1.html

i recognize most major US cities because like a good american i've driven all over the goddamn place. for example, i've been to every city mentioned so far except for chula vista.

Killeen-Temple would have gotten me but reading Jody Beth's post means I've heard of it!

The US one is Columbus, Ohio.

21. Ekaterinoburg, Russia

Mesa Arizona
Aurora Colorado
Riverside California
Stockton California
Plano Texas
Glendale Arizona
Hialeah Florida
Henderson Nevada
Chandler Arizona
Chesapeake Virginia
Chula Vista California
Durham North Carolina

PLANO?!?!??!!?

the europe one is weird, i know them all except lots of those russian ones, and a couple ukranian ones. kharkov is well known though, surely?

the america list is funny, it is strange to see such well known cities as pittsburgh languishing in 51st place

it is also strange that slc and reno are in 110th and 111th, slc seemed about 10 times bigger than lil reno

I guess you could say that Riverside : LA :: New Jersey : Manhattan

From what I understand (speaking to people who've lived there), Stockton is sort of the Riverside of Northern California. It's right next to Lodi, as in the Creedence song.

109 Gomel Belarus

I was pretty surprised at 's Gravenhage being so big. But generally there don't appear to be any major European cities I haven't heard of (though that is mostly through being a football fan).

I always thought LA had atleast 5 million inhabitants.

on the metro list, Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay FL was the first to cause concern, but I've heard of at least one if not two in retrospect. Hickory-Morganton-Lenoir, NC, though, I've definitely never heard of.

Assuming you've been to both Dallas and Ft. Worth... it's kinda hard to get from one to the other without going through Arlington.

Cross it off dude!

Steve

Are you a long-haul truck driver?

Robert

I didn't realize Flint MI was that big.

Oh OK! I was trying to place it from memory and thought it was farther south than it actually is. Denton is the one Dallas suburb I haven't been to.

No, just a lot of driving vacations. I've driven cross-country nine times, up to Alaska and back, out to Colorado, Chicago, Texas and back a couple of times.

Shockingly no! I really want to go there next time I'm in the area.

I'm biased though, because I used to promote all-ages shows at a place in central Santa Ana.. in this DMZ area between the downtown arts district and the highly volatile gang-infested areas.

Santa Ana was righted the highest, at one time, for having the highest Latino population per capita than any other city in the U.S. Walking on 4th St. in downtown Santa Ana is, I gather, the next closest feeling to being in a small Mexican town, in terms of people speaking Spanish to you first then English... then again, I haven't been to San Diego south of Chula Vista, nor have I been to Tijuana (which I have avoided all my life purposely, as I never wanted this city to be my first experience in Mexico.. still never been.)

Unless you watch a lot of true crime shows. Inevitably, someone will be murdered/die mysteriously and there will be a City Confidential, Cold Case File, etc. episode about it. Otherwise a train will derail or a plane will crash and the network news will be there.

Take Henderson, NV for example, the first thing I think of is the rocket fuel plant that exploded there in 1988 - a HUGE explosion roughly equivalent to a 1KT airburst.

Not exactly. Boulder City = Hoover Dam

...THE CHOPPER!

Yup!

ihttp://www.bcmha.org/images/0_end.jpg

Exactly same thing happened to me when I discovered that my hometown of Leicester (English city, pop. 240,000) was twinned with Chongqing in China. "Chongqing? Never heard of it. Is that like Leicester?" I asked, "Well, not really, for a start is has a population of 32 million". So, basically half of the UK. Admittedly only about 3 millions live "downtown" but still, fairly incredible and, I think, pretty crap on my part.

Most bombed city of all time as well, allegedly. (Chongqing, not Leicester obviously).

chengdu is one of the biggest cities in china. well over 10 million, i think. its the capital of sichuan/szechuan province. yummy food. gives you really stinky gas. nice teahouses. near the giant panda reserves... its like two hours by bus away from chongqing/chungking which also has like 10+million people. they used to be in the same province, but i think something like the govt didnt like all those people in the same province, so they made chongqing its own province. i think the city itself only has 10 million, but depending how much sprawl you include, it gets close to 30 million? it was the chiang kai-shek's HQ during WW2, so i can believe that its the most bombed city in history. sucks.

they're also both like an hour or two away from leshan, which has those giant buddhas. which only has like 2 million people or so.

Pffft. Talk about a ghost town.

I hadn't heard of Virginia Beach before today. According to Wikipedia it has "the longest pleasure beach in the world"!

The first one on the list I didn't have firsthand knowledge of was Overland Park KS, but I've done a lot of travel for work to most large US cities.

Star-Telegram

Posted on Thu, Feb. 16, 2006

Mother's minister blames demons

By MELISSA SÁNCHEZ
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

McKINNEY -- The minister of the Plano woman accused of severing her daughter's arms told a Collin County jury Wednesday that mental problems are caused by demons and cannot be cured by medicine.

Defense attorneys have said that Dena Schlosser's involvement with a Plano church played into delusions and psychosis that led her to kill 10-month-old Margaret in November 2004. She was not taking her antipsychotic medication at the time of the slaying, according to testimony in her capital murder trial.

On the stand for more than an hour, Doyle Davidson spoke of demons overtaking people and the presence of a Jezebel spirit ruling Plano, and he compared himself to the apostle Paul who was summoned to Rome as Davidson said he was summoned to McKinney.

"I do not believe that any mental illness exists other than demons, and no medication can straighten it out, other than the power of God," said Davidson, the 73-year-old minister of the Water of Life Church, which the Schlosser family attended several times a week.

Schlosser, 37, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Prosecutors argue that she knew right from wrong at the time of her daughter's death. But defense attorneys have argued that Schlosser was a good mother who had a history of mental problems that went ignored by her husband and doctors until the killing.

Testimony is expected to resume today at 9 a.m. in Judge Chris Oldner's 416th District Court.

A former horse veterinarian, Davidson said he never studied at a seminary because God told him not to. He was taught to preach by reading the Bible and through the spirit of God, he testified. Pictures on a church Web site of Davidson's $400,000 home were submitted into evidence, and Davidson said it was paid for in one year by his parish.

"It is what God has done for my obedience," Davidson said. He said it was proof to his parishioners that "if they obey him he will bless them."

Some jurors rolled their eyes while Davidson spoke in a raspy voice and pointed at a parishioner seated in the audience. At times Davidson smirked at defense attorney William Shultz's questions and often quoted Scripture

The minister testified that he barely knew the Schlosser family, though outside the courtroom he told reporters that he performed a funeral for the baby.

That testimony contradicted earlier statements by John Schlosser, Dena's husband, that the family considered Davidson a confidant and by other witnesses who said the family attended Water of Life four to six times a week when they lived in north Fort Worth, even though the church was a 60-mile drive from their home.

Davidson testified that he only spoke with the family twice and that he never spoke with them about Dena Schlosser giving her infant, known as Maggie, to the church, a plan John Schlosser testified that his wife had mentioned to him.

Davidson also spoke of an October 2004 incident with another parishioner named Lisa that resulted in his arrest by Plano police on suspicion of public intoxication.

Police testified Tuesday that Lisa claimed Davidson was "choking the devil" out of her. An officer testified Tuesday that Davidson was drunk. Davidson said Lisa, her husband and the officers were doing "the devil's work."

Davidson told the court that "God gave Lisa to him" as his wife but that evil spirits have caused her to believe she is married to another man.

"She will come home," Davidson said about Lisa. "She is my wife, not his."

Earlier, Plano police officer Mike Letzelter testified that he almost quit the force after nearly two decades of service after seeing the carnage at the Schlosser home.

He squirmed in his seat while he described the gruesome discovery and looked at pictures of the child's dismembered body -- a beige identification tag hanging from her tiny toes.

Letzelter was the second officer on the scene.

The veteran officer, bomb technician and Marine said that although he has seen much destruction in his life, nothing prepared him for what he saw in the Schlossers' apartment the day the infant was killed.

"I have never seen anything in my career that compared to that," Letzelter said.

on both lists above the largest US city I never heard of is Garden Grove, California (#127 on the first, and #123 on the second)

for metro area, Lakeland--Winter Haven, Florida (#83)

Lakeland was hit particularly hard by the housing crises last year.

Actual answer:
40 Mesa AZ 432,376

if it wasn't for Clipse:
39 Virginia Beach VA 439,467

if it wasn't for Sporcle:
36 Fresno CA 451,455

and probably doesn't count because it looks like it's part of Nashville:
27 Davidson TN 544,765

These outsized suburbs really shouldn't count.

Garland Texas and Henderson Nevada are the only ones I hadn't heard of, and they're both suburbs.

yeah when suburbs are effectively just a giant neighborhood in the urban area they definitely shouldn't count. like, a national news story about a murder in henderson, nv would be 'murder in las vegas'.

(xp)

and probably doesn't count because it looks like it's part of Nashville:
27 Davidson TN 544,765

Davidson is the county that Nashville is in. Back in the '60s the city and county consolidated their governments, so the area is sometimes known by both names. However, the official census designation is "Nashville-Davidson (balance)," which covers Davidson county minus the parts that are not Nashville proper.

Actually, that's not quite true: it covers Davidson county minus any incorporated cities outside Nashville. This includes Nashville proper but also any previuosly unincorporated territory in the county.

When Louisville consolidated with Jefferson county in 2003, even just the Louisville-Jefferson (balance) was twice the size of Louisville proper.

mesa, AZ; aurora, CO

Mesa, Az - is this some kind of secret city, like those numbered science cities they had in the USSR?

almost: it's a mormon enclave, like poway CA outside of san diego. they love their suburbs.

71 Henderson Nevada 256,445

i assume this is a vegas suburb or something?

yeah it's the biggest one

i've been familiar w/Mesa since I was a kid since that's the Cubs Spring Training home. It's a huge town in terms of area.