The Most Beautiful Places to Live? Really?
(Graphic via Washington Post; click over to Post for interactive version)
Ventura County, California, is a real natural beauty, according to the federal government.
Admittedly, it’s hard to argue. Ventura is that stereotypically perfect California place: beaches, mountains in the distance, bright sun, warm weather.
Ventura, California (Photo: Flickr user Harold Litwiler)
The map above – created by the Washington Post and available on its site in an interactive version – is culled from a USDA project ranking the best and worst counties to live in, based on their “natural aspects of attractiveness.”
To the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that means measuring “climate, topography, and water area that reflect environmental qualities most people prefer” – or, as the Post more succinctly puts it, “scenery and climate.”
The USDA was looking for places with mild, sunny winters, temperate summers, low humidity, topographic variation, and access to a body of water, the Post wrote.
Not surprisingly, coastal California nabs every single spot in the Top 10, what with its temperate weather and beautiful craggy mountains and crystal blue Pacific Ocean views. (A caveat: Hawaii and Alaska aren’t included due to insufficient data, so it’s possible California would have been bested by Hawaii.)
On the other end, Minnesota and North Dakota rank the worst. Red Lake County, Minnesota is, by this ranking, the ugliest of the 3,111 counties surveyed. Apparently this place is the ugliest, least desirable of them all?
Red Lake River in Red Lake County (Photo: Panoramio user coreyha1)
Naturally the Midwest takes a beating (and this Chicago-based writer will concede that if you’ve ever driven through Illinois, Indiana or Ohio, it’s hard to argue there). But so does the Great Lakes region, which includes Michigan’s Upper Peninsula:
Alger County, Michigan (Flickr user David Marvin)
Disgusting.
The counties containing the aptly named Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (shown above in Alger County) rank lower than those containing Chicago and Manhattan, which have little truly natural beauty to speak of and their fair share of bad weather. They also rank lower than most of the counties of Oklahoma and Texas, which are arguably just as flat and boring as any other place that ranks low on the list.
If this strikes you as somewhat unreasonable, well, you might be right. The ranking is more than a little suspect.
As Washington Post writer Christopher Ingraham points out, sunshine and warm weather really seem to play too large a role in the ranking:
How else to explain that Inyo County, Calif.–home to Death Valley, a place so inhospitable to human life that it literally has death in its name–ranks so much higher than, say, the bucolic rolling hillsides of New England?
Or that Maricopa County, Ariz.–home to Phoenix, a place that feels like the inside of a hot car for half the year–ranks higher than the stunningly beautiful and criminally underappreciated Loess Hills region of Iowa?
In fact, the Top 50 is dominated by counties from a handful of states.
The counties that make up the Top 10 are all in California: Ventura, Humboldt (home of redwoods), Santa Barbara, Mendocino County in northern California, Del Norte (just south of the Oregon border), San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Monterey and Orange.
Lake County, Colorado, is the first non-California spot to appear on the list, at No. 11. After that it’s more California mixed with a few Lake Tahoe-ringing Nevada counties, Colorado counties and a few desert counties stuffed with national parks.
The people of Minnesota were so incensed by their bottom-tier rankings, they sent Ingraham photos of their geographic splendor. We’re open to ranking-defying submissions too.
More gorgeousness on Yahoo Real Estate:
• We’re Calling It: This Is Hollywood’s Most Beautiful Home (41 photos)
• An Epic Restoration for a Hoarder’s Disaster (33 photos, before and after)
• Is This Quarry the Most Beautiful Backyard Pool in America?
