I Had to Stop Halfway Up (9 Photos)

Streets Too Steep to Believe

Some of these are old lanes that wind up a hill the way they always have. Others are grid streets laid out in straight lines, hill or no hill. Either way, people live at the top, park at an angle and get used to visitors stopping halfway to catch their breath. Two of them have even taken their argument over which one is steeper to Guinness World Records.

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🏆 Baldwin Street — Dunedin, New Zealand 🇳🇿

From the stop line at the bottom, the road just keeps rising and the houses climb with it. Guinness World Records lists Baldwin Street as the world’s steepest street, at a gradient of 34.8% measured along the center line. Residents walk it every day. Visitors usually manage it once.

💡 Record Fact: Wales took the title in 2019. A Dunedin surveyor, Toby Stoff, helped make the case for a re-measurement, and in April 2020 Baldwin Street got it back.

📷 Photo and cover crop: “View up Baldwin Street” by Pseudopanax / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

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🪧 Ffordd Pen Llech — Harlech, Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

The sign makes the claim in Welsh and English, and for about nine months it was official. Harlech resident Gwyn Headley pushed for a survey, which measured 37.45% at the steepest point, and in 2019 Guinness gave Ffordd Pen Llech the record. Measured along the center line, though, it comes out at 28.6%, so the title went back to Dunedin. This photo was taken in December 2020, eight months later, and the sign still said so.

💡 Survey Fact: Surveyor Myrddyn Phillips used chalk to mark the key spots and bricks to steady the tripod.

📷 Photo: “Street sign for Fford Pen Llech, ‘the world’s steepest street’, Wales, UK” by Jonathan Deamer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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🚲 Canton Avenue — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA 🇺🇸

Cobblestones on the road, and a sidewalk that gave up and turned into stairs. Canton Avenue in Beechview has a 37% grade along a 21-foot stretch, and a sign at the bottom calls it “the steepest street in the continental United States.” Twenty-one feet sounds short until you try it.

💡 Bike Fact: It’s the showpiece climb of Pittsburgh’s annual Dirty Dozen bicycle race.

📷 Photo and cover crop: Mr. Matté / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🍞 Gold Hill — Shaftesbury, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Stone and thatched cottages step down the cobbles, one roof below the next, with the old abbey precinct wall on the other side of the lane. British readers may know it from a bread ad: in 1973 Ridley Scott filmed the Hovis “Boy on the Bike” commercial on Gold Hill.

💡 Ad Fact: The ad was meant to show a northern industrial town, and in 2006 it was voted Britain’s favorite TV advertisement of all time.

📷 Photo: “Gold Hill, Shaftesbury” by michael clarke stuff / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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🌀 Lombard Street — San Francisco, California, USA 🇺🇸

A minivan takes one of the hairpins on the red-brick block between Hyde and Leavenworth. Before 1922 this block of Lombard Street ran straight down a natural 27% grade, too steep for the cars of the day, and the turns were the fix. Cars can only go down.

💡 Crowd Fact: On a busy summer day the block can get up to 17,000 visitors, for one block of houses.

📷 Photo: Cornflower123 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0)

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⛵ Clovelly High Street — Devon, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

No car has a chance here: the cobbled High Street of Clovelly steps down between white cottages all the way to the sea. Residents move their shopping on sledges, and the whole village has belonged to the same family since Zachary Hamlyn bought it in 1738. Visitors pay an entrance fee to walk down it.

💡 History Fact: Clovelly has been associated with just three families since the middle of the 13th century.

📷 Photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🍂 Steep Hill — Lincoln, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Fallen leaves, a handrail down the middle and everyone taking it slowly. The name is a plain description: Steep Hill climbs from the lower city toward Lincoln Cathedral and Castle, past the 12th-century Norman House.

💡 Award Fact: The Academy of Urbanism named it Great Street of 2012.

📷 Photo: “Autumn on Steep Hill” by Rcsprinter123 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

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🥚 Vale Street — Bristol, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Pastel terraced houses, cars parked nose-down and a church tower across the valley. Vale Street in Totterdown is said to be the steepest residential street in England, at 22 degrees, and every Easter its neighbors roll eggs down it.

💡 Winter Fact: In icy weather some cars have to be tied to lampposts to keep them from sliding down the hill.

📷 Photo: “View down Vale Street” by Tadeusz Hare / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🏙️ Filbert Street — San Francisco, California, USA 🇺🇸

The street dips through North Beach, then goes nearly straight up Russian Hill, with parked cars lined up on the slope. Near the top of Russian Hill is the steepest block of Filbert Street, between Hyde and Leavenworth, at a 31.5% grade.

💡 Ranking Fact: Filbert has the reputation, but 7×7’s re-measured list puts Bradford Street, at 41%, at the top in San Francisco.

📷 Photo: “Filbert Street view towards Russian Hill, San Francisco” by Ilkka Simomaa / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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Which one is your favorite?