Top 20 American Cities to Visit, Ranked

It’s time for another version of GroupThink, where our writers get together and rank something. For summer vacation season, we are ranking our best American cities to visit. We have writers from all over the country, who have a variety of different experiences and preferences. Tully Corcoran, Stephen Douglas, Ryan Glasspiegel, Kyle Koster, Jason Lisk, Ryan Phillips, and Michael Shamburger all contributed to this list.

The only rules were you could only personally rank a location if you had been there, and the Wisdom of the Crowds would fill in, and you could consider things within a short distance (an hour or so) as part of your ranking of that location. Everyone submitted a list of 20.

Geographically, we have a pretty good span of locations. All told, 65 different locations got at least one vote. The largest media market not to get a single vote: Sacramento (sorry, Kings fans).

#1 Chicago (6 ballots, top 3 in 5 of them)

#2 New York City (5 ballots, top 6 in all 5)

#3 Las Vegas (6 ballots, top 5 in 4 of them)

#4 Denver (6 ballots, top 6 in 3 of them)

#5 New Orleans (4 ballots, top 5 in all 4)

#6 San Diego (4 ballots, ranked #1 in 3 of them)

#7 Washington, D.C. (5 ballots, once in top 5)

#8 San Francisco (4 ballots)

#9 Boston (4 ballots, top 5 once)

#10 Seattle (3 ballots, top 5 once)

#11 Austin

#12 Miami

#13 Orlando

#14 Los Angeles

#15 Nashville

#16 Portland

#17 Milwaukee

#18 Philadelphia

#19 Honolulu

#20 Madison

Houston, Minneapolis, and Dallas all just missed the list, one point behind Madison. Blame resident UW grad Ryan Glasspiegel, who enjoyed his time on campus immensely.

Several smaller cities also just missed the cut, but received plenty of support. Here were cities outside the top 50 in size that missed the top 20 but finished highest: Saratoga Springs, NY; Fort Myers, FL; Gettysburg, PA; Lahaina, HI; Destin, FL; Ouray, CO; Baton Rouge, LA; Jackson Hole, WY; Charleston, SC; Ocean City, MD.

Here’s what Mike and Mike thought of our rankings.

Previous GroupThink Rankings:

http://thebiglead.com/2016/04/21/groupthink-top-10-game-of-thrones-death-scenes/

http://thebiglead.com/2016/03/03/groupthink-ranking-the-best-comedy-films/

http://thebiglead.com/2016/02/26/nfl-qb-rankings-aaron-rodgers-cam-newton-russell-wilson-tom-brady/