California Has Seven of the Ten Steepest Streets in America

Baxter Street in 1937.Herman J. Schultheis Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

From the LA Times this morning:

Baxter Street in Echo Park, one of the steepest roads in Los Angeles, is about to get a makeover….The narrow road has a 33% grade, the third steepest in Los Angeles and 10th in the nation. In recent years, navigation apps have directed more drivers to Baxter Street to avoid traffic jams along nearby Glendale Boulevard. But the apps don’t tell drivers how treacherous the road can be, especially in rainy weather.

I hate stories like this. They tease you with stuff about Baxter Street being the third-steepest in Los Angeles, but they don’t tell you which street is the first steepest. Come on! And who keeps track of stuff like this, anyway? The Federal Steep Roads Agency?

Beats me. However, according to fixr.com, here are the ten steepest streets in America:

  1. Waipio Rd. in Honokaa, HI — 45% gradient
  2. Canton Ave. in Pittsburgh, PA — 37% gradient
  3. Eldred St. in Los Angeles, CA — 33.3% gradient
  4. 28th St. in Los Angeles, CA — 33% gradient
  5. Baxter St. in Los Angeles, CA — 32% gradient
  6. Fargo St. in Los Angeles, CA — 32% gradient
  7. Maria Ave. in Spring Valley, CA — 32% gradient
  8. Dornbush St. in Pittsburgh, PA — 31.98% gradient
  9. 22nd St. in San Francisco, CA — 31.5% gradient
  10. Filbert St. in San Francisco, CA — 31.5% gradient

Baxter Street is the fifth steepest. Is there an updated list that puts it at tenth? Or maybe it’s tenth in the world? I dunno. And I’m surprised that California has seven of the top ten. I wouldn’t have guessed that. Here is the story of Baxter Street from KCET:

It began as a sliver of land in an 1853 survey, separating empty real estate tracts in what was then the city’s northwest corner. The city designated that narrow strip Baxter Street in 1872, and when subdividers eventually carved those empty tracts into housing developments in the late 1890s, they honored the surveyors’ lines and imposed a grid pattern on the hilly land. Then, the arrow-straight line of Baxter Street made some practical sense. As Matthew Roth of the Auto Club Archives noted in an interview, the road — like many of L.A.’s so-called secret stairways — functioned as a pedestrian access path for a streetcar line along present-day Echo Park Avenue.

Baxter later became a proving ground for automobiles, as manufacturers staged elaborate stunts to demonstrate their vehicles’ power. In one such event in 1916, a four-wheel-drive truck loaded with 4,300 pounds of baled hay groaned its way up the grade, pausing twice for newspaper cameras.

So there you have it. Back in 1872, they built streets on gridlines like real men and didn’t let mindless frippery stop them. It’s not like today, when we’re all soft and lazy and break the lovely gridlines whenever we feel like it for no reason except that they make streets “too steep.” It’s sad that we’ve lost that can-do American spirit: nowadays LA doesn’t allow new streets to have more than a 15 percent gradient. Here’s a guy skateboarding down Baxter Street:

Skateboarding Down The 10th Steepest Hill in America

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate