28 Urbane Facts About US Cities Many Don’t Know

The city of Detroit sits on top of a working salt mine. This mine has provided road salt for most of North America since 1910.

A major reason Los Angeles grew to be so huge was because the city controlled the entire area's water supply. The only way surrounding towns could get water was to annex themselves to Los Angeles.

Lexington, Kentucky accepts canned food as payment for parking fines to feed the homeless.

The city of Denver was originally awarded the honor of hosting the 1976 Winter Olympics. The people of Colorado, however, voted against funding the games, and Innsbruck (Austria) ended up hosting them. This is the only time in history that a city has been awarded the games but rejected them later.

Boston has hidden poems on its sidewalks that are only visible when wet. When it rains, pedestrians are treated to the work of Langston Hughes and others.

Las Vegas almost built a full-scale replica of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. The project had funding but was blocked by the CEO of Paramount.

Webber Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota has an all-natural swimming pool. It is a self-contained swimming vessel that uses plants and natural microbes from a nearby regeneration pond to clarify and purify the water instead of chemicals for sterilization or disinfection.

Lincoln, Nebraska was named after Abraham Lincoln as a ploy to keep Nebraska's capital as Omaha. Many people in Nebraska had been sympathetic to the Confederate cause and it was assumed that the legislature would not change the capital if the new capital were named after Abraham Lincoln.

Miami is the only major American city that was founded by a woman. Julia Tuttle, a woman from Cleveland, purchased 640 acres in present-day downtown Miami to start a new chapter in her life after her husband died.

Portland was named by a coin flip. Had the coin landed the other way, the city would have been Boston, Oregon.