Yeah. It seems wrong to me too- there are while groupings of those that are easily knocked off in a weekend and quite a few that one could easily hit just doing sort of “weekend trips” over time- but then I thought about it and there are like 4 states that have more than 5% of the total population and then 20 states that have less than 1% with the others in between- and when one looks at the distances, demographics and economic factors etc… suddenly it’s like- yeah. Ok. I mean- let’s just pick a number and say a generous 10% of any states population will travel to these destinations- California has around 11% of the nations total population, so 10% is like 3 million people- and California tends to have some of the highest earnings in the country and happens to be host to or near a decent chunk of places on the list- so if you’re in California you probably have good odds of meeting lots of people who have traveled to these places. NY and TX have high populations and generally some…
.. healthy percentage of relatively wealthy folks as well as being other “major business” states where traveling to other “big business states” could at least be common for work- so likewise depending on where in one of these states you are- your odds could be pretty high of meeting enough people who have been to many or most of these places that you’d think this was skewed. That said- within these states are lower income or more insulated areas and communities- but on the whole there are many states that overall have lower wealth, less “big business” of the sort that would travel to many destination states for these locations as a common thing, and don’t have any of these land marks within their borders. Add in that if we use our “10%,” travel number- the 30 states with less than 1% of the National population would be dwarfed in the number of people you’d meet who’d been to these places.
So once we get into the lower 20 or so states by population- if 10% of Californians travel regularly, the lower 20 states in population would need 100% or in some cases more than the entire population of the state to travel regularly to have the same number of people possibly visit these places.
Of course there are other demographic factors and such- the “road trip” or general migration have long been the staples of many sights on this list- driving from NY to CA or Oregon to Texas or Michigan to Florida, driving to see the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls etc. were “rights of passage” or regular family activities which cultural changes and rising gas prices among other things sort of took a big toll on.
Military base closures also took a chunk out of the places many might get to see in the past several decades where before depending on branch and speciality one in the service might do things like transport and logistics or serve on a ship or do other duties where they might find themselves in many places across the US and near many of these places- base closures changed a lot of what and where one might find themselves. So I mean- it’s possible this is some click bait type nonsense, most people I know could easily check off at least 5 of these things, but it’s also possible those of us who can name dozens of these and more we’ve been to might be more privileged than our experiences would have us believe.
I mean- wether locals do the “touristy” stuff at all is individual and when generalization go debatable. School trips and out of town guests often take you to places that people will fly from around the world to see but you probably wouldn’t bother going to even though you grew up with it in your backyard.
I mean- for all the people who cross the Golden Gate or George Washington everyday or regularly it’s just a bridge with a toll that’s too high and traffic between them and where they need to go. Pretty is pretty sure, but it can be hundreds of dollars to go to the top of the Empire State and a good chunk of change just to go to the observation deck after a nice long wait- so I mean- there’s usually enough stuff to do and life to live that alot of people who live near some of these things see it as a waste of time and/or money to just go do it for no reason.
Yeah. I definitely feel privileged to be able to say I’ve seen so many of the sights.
As you say, a lot of these spots are not short trips for most of the country. There were a handful of things just in DC. But no mention of the space museum in AL (biggest space museum in the world), or the great Smoky Mountains in TN (one of the most biodiverse regions in the US), or Mammoth Cave in KY (longest known cave system in the world)… those are just things I know of because I live in within a long weekend of enjoying. Everything on the posted list is at least 7 hours of driving from where I live. And, I’m sure there are many places in the US where the same could be said. However, there are amazing and important things that are much closer. So really the metric is sort of meaningless.
Extremely well said. There are so many beautiful natural features and historic buildings, interesting or odd and unique architecture spread all over the map. Hidden gems and vistas, things that often don’t even appear in most any map or guidebook and sometimes aren’t even well known to locals.
My father always used to say that so many people were eager to travel the world who had never even seen 1/1000th of the diversity and beauty of their own country. Not saying one can’t or shouldn’t travel the world- I think it’s probably impossible to see all the beautiful and amazing things in most countries of you spent your whole life there- people can live in one place for a decade or more and haven’t seen and done all there is to do there. To what you were saying though- there are amazing things all over and using this list as some sort of metric of achievement is arbitrary for sure.
17! The thing about a lot of Californians especially in the Bay Area and LA - so many have only travelled locally or maybe to Mexico. They have everything they need within 50 miles so why go somewhere else? Not to say is good, but accurate too often.
Of course there are other demographic factors and such- the “road trip” or general migration have long been the staples of many sights on this list- driving from NY to CA or Oregon to Texas or Michigan to Florida, driving to see the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls etc. were “rights of passage” or regular family activities which cultural changes and rising gas prices among other things sort of took a big toll on.
I mean- for all the people who cross the Golden Gate or George Washington everyday or regularly it’s just a bridge with a toll that’s too high and traffic between them and where they need to go. Pretty is pretty sure, but it can be hundreds of dollars to go to the top of the Empire State and a good chunk of change just to go to the observation deck after a nice long wait- so I mean- there’s usually enough stuff to do and life to live that alot of people who live near some of these things see it as a waste of time and/or money to just go do it for no reason.
As you say, a lot of these spots are not short trips for most of the country. There were a handful of things just in DC. But no mention of the space museum in AL (biggest space museum in the world), or the great Smoky Mountains in TN (one of the most biodiverse regions in the US), or Mammoth Cave in KY (longest known cave system in the world)… those are just things I know of because I live in within a long weekend of enjoying. Everything on the posted list is at least 7 hours of driving from where I live. And, I’m sure there are many places in the US where the same could be said. However, there are amazing and important things that are much closer. So really the metric is sort of meaningless.
My father always used to say that so many people were eager to travel the world who had never even seen 1/1000th of the diversity and beauty of their own country. Not saying one can’t or shouldn’t travel the world- I think it’s probably impossible to see all the beautiful and amazing things in most countries of you spent your whole life there- people can live in one place for a decade or more and haven’t seen and done all there is to do there. To what you were saying though- there are amazing things all over and using this list as some sort of metric of achievement is arbitrary for sure.