“It was Literal Hell”: Reddit Users Weigh In on the Worst Places They’ve Ever Visited in America

A recent post on Reddit's r/AskReddit forum with millions of members asked users to name the worst place they had ever visited in the United States. The thread has, as of the time fo writing, more than 5,800 comments with responses that range from industrial cities to impoverished reservation towns and polluted river corridors.

Several places appeared repeatedly in the discussion:

1) Gary, Indiana

Multiple users independently named this northwestern Indiana city. One commenter, who is a social worker in East Cleveland, wrote that their "jaw hit the floor" driving through Gary.

"One home I drove past had no exterior wall, and I was literally watching a guy watch TV in his living room from the stoplight," the user wrote. Others described accidentally exiting the highway in Gary at night and speeding away from the neighborhood. One described it as having a "post-apocalyptic hellscape" atmosphere.

Gary was once a booming steel town, but it has since experienced decades of population decline and industrial collapse. According to one commenter, in 1930, its real estate was comparable in value to California coastal property.

2) Pine Ridge, South Dakota

A user described spending their teenage years on the Oglala Lakota Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge. They wrote of rampant gang activity, poverty, and the absence of infrastructure and opportunity.

They mentioned that they lived in a trailer with no electricity or water and raised younger siblings largely on their own. They even dropped out of school to care for the family, and "it was literal hell." They added that they have now built a stable family life of their own.

Another commenter agreed that "people have NO IDEA the kind of poverty that exists on Pine Ridge and Rosebud." A separate user who said their uncle worked as a physician at the Pine Ridge clinic noted: "He has a worn, haggard look whenever he talks about it."

3) Cairo, Illinois

This small city is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, and has been described as a once-thriving community that has now been reduced to a shadow of its former self. "It is depressing what happened to that city," one user wrote. "It was once regarded as one of the prettiest towns along the Mississippi River."

Another commenter pointed out that the town had to be evacuated in 2011 due to flooding. They described the decision to build on a wedge of land between two major rivers as "a bold choice."

4) East St. Louis, Illinois, and the Navajo Nation

One user who bicycled through the Navajo Nation in 2011 and then went by car in 2025 wrote that it "seemed worse than I remember." They described broken glass lining highway shoulders, and that most of the infrastructure looked like it was from an earlier time.

Another user described Cancer Alley along the Mississippi River in Louisiana between Baton Rouge and New Orleans as the most haunting place. The number of petrochemical plants has led to its residents' disproportionately high rates of cancer and respiratory illness.

Other places that came up on this Reddit thread were:

• Amarillo, Texas (described as detectable by smell from miles away)
• Jackson, Mississippi (where a hotel employee reportedly advised guests not to leave on foot)
• Shreveport, Louisiana
• Skid Row in Los Angeles
• Port Arthur, Texas
• Stockton, California
• Niagara Falls, New York (away from the state park)
• Camden, New Jersey
• Augusta, Georgia

One humorous response read, "My local DMV," and got a slew of grievances about government offices across the U.S.!