Capital Cities Ranked from Most Obvious to Most Obscure

[Brandon]

Cambridge, in the Boston MSA, has Harvard and MIT, though, which I think are probably more well-known than UMass.

I thought the point was about state schools being with the state capital, not private schools.

Is MIT not a state school? Hell, shows what I know.

All the big schools in the Boston area (Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University) are private.

[Roadgeekteen]

Cambridge, in the Boston MSA, has Harvard and MIT, though, which I think are probably more well-known than UMass.

I thought the point was about state schools being with the state capital, not private schools.

Is MIT not a state school? Hell, shows what I know.

All the big schools in the Boston area (Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University) are private.

UMASS boston is the only public university near Boston. The other Umasses are in other regions of the state.

[mrsman]

Cambridge, in the Boston MSA, has Harvard and MIT, though, which I think are probably more well-known than UMass.

I thought the point was about state schools being with the state capital, not private schools.

There may be two "schools" (pardon the pun) on this.  My point when I mentioned it earlier was to have a significant university in a state capital.  If it is the public flagship like WI or TX that's great.  But I was contemplating even a decent mid-ranked public or private school from benefiting from the capital location.

Boston, a state capital, certainly benefits from universities, even though the nearby universities are private.

Then Sacramento has Cal State Sacramento and UC Davis not too far away.  While not the top universities in the state, both are respectable insitutions within the state's dual track university system.

[The Nature Boy]

MIT was founded as one of Massachusetts's land grant schools. It was quite literally created by an act of the Massachusetts legislature and was originally in Boston. The future UMass Amherst was MA's other land grant school and was the only one that was public.

No idea how MIT became a private school but it was a creature of the Massachusetts legislature so kind of fits into this line of discussion.

[MikieTimT]

What puzzles me is those states where the state schools are in far-flung places, like Arkansas and West Virginia. Why were the schools placed in a remote area far from the state's opposite corner, instead of in a central city closer to more of the population? WVU's more natural geographical rival isn't Marshall, it's Pitt.

University of Arkansas is a land-grant university.  It's located where it is because they got the land for free along with some some other perks to locate on the hill.

[Henry]

FWIW, 17 of the state capitals are also the most familiar in their state (Phoenix, Little Rock, Denver, Hartford, Atlanta, Honolulu, Boise, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Boston, Jackson, Oklahoma City, Providence, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Richmond, Cheyenne). St. Paul gets an asterisk because it shares a metropolitan area with Minneapolis, Columbus still lags behind Cincinnati and Cleveland despite its sudden population growth, and Sacramento is easily dominated by the Golden State's three big metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, San Diego and the Bay Area.

[Hwy 61 Revisited]

I fail to see how Harrisburg, which is probably close to the center of the state when weighted by population–and is at the confluence of four two-digit interstates connecting nearly all of the state's metro areas plus a US route that's part of an international corridor–qualifies as "off the beaten path".

Harrisburg was really tough to rank, probably one of the hardest. And it's a prime example of the clumsiness of that heading, in particular, which I will revise as soon as I can come up with a better name.

The problem is that Harrisburg is the #9 city in PA, which is quite low. Lower than 45 other states, in fact. Only New Jersey, Kentucky, Missouri, and Washington have capitals that are #9 or further down the list by population.
Even Annapolis, MD is only #7, while Pierre, SD is #8.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States

Harrisburg certainly punches above its weight in terms of being a strategically located, major crossroads. But I just couldn't put it in the same league as Albany and Lansing because it really is not that well known nationally and is even under 50K in population.

Harrisburg is only the 4th-largest metro in Pennsylvania, other than the Delaware Valley, Greater Pittsburgh, and the Lehigh Valley.

[thspfc]

Discussion in some other threads got me thinking about capital cities, and how some are so obvious, while others are real head-scratchers.
So I thought I'd rank them from most obvious to most obscure, and maybe this could be an opportunity to discuss the history of our state capitals and what caused them to be located where they are. So, without further ado:

The No-Brainers
1. Oklahoma City
2. Indianapolis
3. Boston
4. Atlanta
5. Phoenix
6. Denver
7. Columbus
8. Nashville
9. Honolulu
10. Salt Lake City

I would move Columbus and Nashville down a tier. I wouldn't say they're no brainers because there are several other cities worthy of being the state capital in those states.

[texaskdog]

Because I've never spent time in either area, I start to blend Charleston, SC and Charleston, WV, especially because of the SC city's greater prominence over Columbia.

I'm sure more than a few people would say Minneapolis is our capital if put on the spot, between the penchant of the media to refer to "Minneapolis-St. Paul"  and most people generally aware that Minneapolis is larger, which for some reason means "capital"  in many minds even though the capital and largest city are only the same in probably about 1/5 of states (AR, AZ, CO, GA, IA, IN, MA, OH, OK, UT being most of that list - oh, and ask how many people can name the largest city in Ohio while they're at it, they'll probably be wrong )

Also, Austin isn't "mid-sized"  - isn't is second to Phoenix in state capital population? It just gets lost in the shuffle somehow between the more famous San Antonio and all of Texas's other massive cities.

Austin is on the list of cities almost large enough for a major sports team. 29th largest MSA currently.  Actually larger than 9 NFL locations (I'm including the whole MSA)