What is the smallest city in your country that everyone can still instantly recognise the name of? What is it famous for?
What is the smallest city in your country that everyone can still instantly recognise the name of? What is it famous for?
In the United States, I'd probably name Oregon City, the famous end of the Oregon Trail and the first city founded west of the Rocky Mountains during the pioneer era. Its population is only 37,000.
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I’m in the US and I can’t say I’d heard of Oregon City before this post…
Oregon City would be my answer to 'what's the capital of Oregon?'
Just a standard, since I never heard of the capital I'll try the state name plus city guess.
I take it it's not Portland?
I just looked it up. Salem is the capital. Portland is the largest city.
I thought the Oregon Trail was a pretty standard part of US history curriculum.
From US, played Oregon trail for hundreds of hours, didn't remember Oregon City.
Nantucket Massachusetts 10k
Aspen Colorado 7k
Jackson Hole Wyoming 10k
Key West Florida 25k
Probably all more famous and smaller population.
Tombstone, AZ has a population of 1,313.
And every one of them is hot.
Hannibal, MO - 16,838 - back when people read books they'd know this as the birthplace of Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain
I think the game ended in The Dalles didn't it?
I too have never heard of Oregon City. I can only assume it's in Oregon. The only thing I remember about the Oregon Trail is that I died from dysentery every time I followed the trail.
It was popular, but I think most folks who played it remember dying of dysentery, not the cities 😆
Oregon trail, yes, Oregon city, no. I remember learning that it went from independence Missouri to the Willamette Valley. If I had to guess where I thought it ended, I would have said Portland.
We were taught about it, but most Americans don't view westward expansion with the same... Reverence? Notoriety?
Like, I remember learning about it across multiple grades, but... Oregon City being the final destination, that's not something I would probably remember a year or two later, nevermind a decade or more.
It is. But that's not saying much.
I may have had to keep a few of the waypoints of the trail in my head for, oh, a week or so, just long enough to scribble it on a history test. Then that information was immediately cleared out to make way for whatever other junk we had to temporarily memorize next chapter.
Only a vague, blurry notion that the Oregon Trail A) existed and B) was a trail to (presumably) somewhere in Oregon remains with me today. Oregon City is certainly not a part of that notion.
Not to shit on the Oregon Trail or Oregon City in particular, of course. I would be truly baffled to meet anyone that retained, in significant detail, even a tenth of what any grade school history class purportedly taught them.
But most of the world did not have the US education system. I'd say only some Americans have heard of Oregon City, and very few non Americans.