Greatest Riverfront Cities in America

New Orleans

The Mississippi didn't just build New Orleans, it IS New Orleans — the river's curve gave the city its 'Crescent City' nickname and its entire reason for existing as America's great port. Jackson Square, the French Quarter, and the Riverwalk all bend around the water, and Katrina

Main River: Mississippi RiverRiverfront Quality: 9/10Metro Population: 1,000,000 peopleFounded: 1718Signature Riverfront Landmark: French Quarter Riverwalk

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Chicago

Chicago literally reversed the flow of its river in 1900 to save Lake Michigan from its own sewage — an engineering flex no other city on this list can match. Today the Chicago Riverwalk, lined by Mies van der Rohe towers and the Marina City corncobs, is arguably the single best

Main River: Chicago RiverRiverfront Quality: 10/10Metro Population: 9,500,000 peopleFounded: 1833Signature Riverfront Landmark: Chicago Riverwalk

added by IJRin 15 rankings

Pittsburgh

Three rivers — the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio — converge at Point State Park in a geographic flex unmatched in the U.S., and it's the reason a French fort and later a steel empire rose exactly here. The fountain at the Point, backed by PNC Park and the yellow bridges, turne

Main River: Three Rivers (Allegheny/Monongahela/Ohio)Riverfront Quality: 9/10Metro Population: 2,300,000 peopleFounded: 1758Signature Riverfront Landmark: Point State Park

added by IJRin 8 rankings

St. Louis

The Gateway Arch rises 630 feet directly off the Mississippi's western bank, a monument built specifically to honor St. Louis's role as launchpad for westward expansion. The river made it the fur-trading capital of the continent before railroads shifted power elsewhere, but the A

Main River: Mississippi RiverRiverfront Quality: 8/10Metro Population: 2,800,000 peopleFounded: 1764Signature Riverfront Landmark: Gateway Arch

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Cincinnati

Cincinnati's Ohio River waterfront gave the world the Roebling Suspension Bridge, the direct design prototype John Roebling later scaled up into the Brooklyn Bridge. Steamboats made 'Porkopolis' the boomtown of the Old Northwest, and the modern Banks development has reclaimed tha

Main River: Ohio RiverRiverfront Quality: 8/10Metro Population: 2,200,000 peopleFounded: 1788Signature Riverfront Landmark: Roebling Suspension Bridge

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Louisville

Louisville exists because of the Falls of the Ohio, the only major rapids on the entire river, which forced every boat to portage and made the city an unavoidable trading choke point. Waterfront Park's transformation of old industrial rail yards into 85 acres of green space is on

Main River: Ohio RiverRiverfront Quality: 7.5/10Metro Population: 1,300,000 peopleFounded: 1778Signature Riverfront Landmark: Waterfront Park

added by IJR

Memphis

Memphis sits on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff overlooking the Mississippi, a perch that made it the cotton capital of the mid-South and the reason Beale Street's blues could ship out on riverboats to the world. Mud Island's river museum and the M-shaped Hernando de Soto Bridge light

Main River: Mississippi RiverRiverfront Quality: 7.5/10Metro Population: 1,300,000 peopleFounded: 1819Signature Riverfront Landmark: Mud Island River Park

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Nashville

The Cumberland River carried the flatboats that founded Nashville in 1779 and, two centuries later, floods it catastrophically in 2010 — a reminder the river gives and takes. Cumberland Park and the pedestrian bridge now stage everything from CMA Fest fireworks to Fourth of July

Main River: Cumberland RiverRiverfront Quality: 7/10Metro Population: 2,000,000 peopleFounded: 1779Signature Riverfront Landmark: Cumberland Park

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Savannah

Savannah's cobblestoned River Street, built on ballast stones from centuries of trading ships, is one of the most atmospheric riverfronts in the country and the literal reason General Oglethorpe planted the colony here in 1733. Cotton warehouses that once fed the antebellum econo

Main River: Savannah RiverRiverfront Quality: 8.5/10Metro Population: 400,000 peopleFounded: 1733Signature Riverfront Landmark: River Street

added by IJR

Portland

Portland tore down the Harbor Drive freeway in 1974 to build Tom McCall Waterfront Park, one of the earliest and most influential urban-highway-to-park conversions in American history. The Willamette's bridges — a dozen of them, more than any U.S. city — define the skyline and gi

Main River: Willamette RiverRiverfront Quality: 8/10Metro Population: 2,500,000 peopleFounded: 1845Signature Riverfront Landmark: Tom McCall Waterfront Park

added by IJRin 4 rankings

San Antonio

The San Antonio River Walk is the wildest bet on this list: a WPA-era flood-control ditch turned into a below-street-level network of cafes, cypress trees, and barges that now draws more visitors than the Alamo itself. It proved a river doesn't need to be big to become a city's d

Main River: San Antonio RiverRiverfront Quality: 9/10Metro Population: 2,600,000 peopleFounded: 1718Signature Riverfront Landmark: River Walk

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Minneapolis

St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi powered the flour mills that made Minneapolis 'Mill City' and the breadbasket capital of America by 1900. The Stone Arch Bridge, built by James J. Hill's railroad in 1883, still arcs across the falls as the city's most photographed river cross

Main River: Mississippi RiverRiverfront Quality: 7.5/10Metro Population: 3,700,000 peopleFounded: 1867Signature Riverfront Landmark: Stone Arch Bridge

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Richmond

The James River's Class III-IV rapids run directly through downtown Richmond, making it the only U.S. capital city with genuine whitewater rafting minutes from its skyscrapers. Belle Isle and the James River Park System turned a former hydro-power and POW-camp island into one of

Main River: James RiverRiverfront Quality: 7/10Metro Population: 1,300,000 peopleFounded: 1737Signature Riverfront Landmark: James River Park System

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Chattanooga

Chattanooga rebranded itself from a smog-choked industrial city in the 1960s into the 'Scenic City,' anchored by the Tennessee Aquarium and a riverfront so clean it now hosts world-class rowing regattas. The Walnut Street Bridge, once a lynching site, was reclaimed as America's l

Main River: Tennessee RiverRiverfront Quality: 8/10Metro Population: 400,000 peopleFounded: 1839Signature Riverfront Landmark: Walnut Street Bridge

added by IJR

Sacramento

Sacramento's Gold Rush-era waterfront at Old Sacramento still has wooden boardwalks over the exact spot where Sutter's Fort supplies once landed by steamboat, kicking off California's 1849 mania. The city has struggled to modernize its riverfront beyond the historic district, lea

Main River: Sacramento RiverRiverfront Quality: 6/10Metro Population: 2,400,000 peopleFounded: 1848Signature Riverfront Landmark: Old Sacramento Waterfront

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Wilmington

Wilmington's Riverwalk along the Cape Fear River stitches together a Civil War blockade-runner history with a modern boardwalk that's become the backbone of North Carolina's most filmed small city. Battleship North Carolina, moored just across the water, anchors the view and the

Main River: Cape Fear RiverRiverfront Quality: 7/10Metro Population: 300,000 peopleFounded: 1739Signature Riverfront Landmark: Wilmington Riverwalk

added by IJR

Detroit

The Detroit River is the only spot on this list where you can watch international freighters glide past a skyline while looking directly across at another country. The Detroit RiverWalk, built through the 2000s along former industrial land, has become the clearest physical symbol

Main River: Detroit RiverRiverfront Quality: 7/10Metro Population: 4,300,000 peopleFounded: 1701Signature Riverfront Landmark: Detroit RiverWalk

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Philadelphia

Philadelphia is bracketed by two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill, and it's the Schuylkill's Boathouse Row — a strip of Victorian rowing clubs lit up nightly — that gives the city one of the most iconic river vistas in America. Penn's Landing on the Delaware marks William

Main River: Delaware & Schuylkill RiversRiverfront Quality: 7/10Metro Population: 6,200,000 peopleFounded: 1682Signature Riverfront Landmark: Boathouse Row

added by IJRin 10 rankings