McDonald’s Restaurants by Magnitude of Mountain Backdrop / Rut

by u/Gigitoe

Eating a Big Mac® while gazing at Big Mountains is an experience that millions of Americans can relate to. But little do we ask ourselves, which McDonald’s restaurants have the biggest, baddest mountain backdrop?

So I set out to answer this question, using rut,
a topographic metric that does particularly well at identifying cities
with badass mountain backdrops. (For more info, check out this Mercury News article by John Metcalfe, or my research paper)

Roughly speaking, this is how rut works:

  • The higher the mountains rise above a restaurant, the more impressive they appear, and the greater the rut.
  • The more steeply the mountains rise above a restaurant, the more impressive they appear, and the greater the rut.

Here’s
a tier list that shows the rut of the ruttiest McDonald’s restaurant in
various cities. The cutoffs are rather arbitrary, so please don’t
poison me with a Grimace Shake if your city doesn’t get the tier you
like 🙂

S tier – rut > 400 m (i’m lovin’ it. would visit just for mountain views)

Palm Springs, CA (647 m) | Weed, CA (624 m) | Springville, UT (609 m) | Lone Pine, CA (521 m) | Rancho Cucamonga, CA (503 m) | Kailua Kona, HI (432 m) | Salt Lake City, UT (404 m)

A tier – rut between 200 to 400 m (impressive, but probably wouldn’t visit just for mountain views)

Colorado
Springs, CO (383 m) | Gatlinburg, TN (273 m) | Tacoma, WA (267 m) |
Tucson, AZ (246 m) | Juneau, AK (223 m) | Tucson, AZ (209 m) |
Albuquerque, NM (215 m) | Las Vegas, NV (209 m)

B tier – rut between 100 and 200 m (mountains nearby, or distant big mountains, or very distant huge mountains)

Anchorage,
AK (192 m) | Seattle, WA (185 m) | Manchester, VT (166 m) | El Paso, TX
(160 m) | Los Angeles, CA (153 m) | Portland, OR (144 m) | Denver, CO
(126 m) | Boise, ID (106 m)

C tier – rut between 50 and 100 m (big hills nearby, or distant mountains, or very distant big mountains)

Rutland,
VT (99 m) | San Diego, CA (84 m) | Asheville, NC (75 m) | Middlesboro,
KY (70 m) | Phoenix, AZ (67 m) | Roanoke, VA (46 m)

D tier – rut between 25 and 50 m (hills nearby, or distant big hills, or very distant mountains)

Billings,
MT (40 m) | Rapid City, SD (37 m) | Dalton, GA (38 m) | Hot Springs, AR
(37 m) | Pittsburgh, PA (33 m) | San Francisco, CA (30 m) | Portsmouth,
OH (26 m) | Greenville, SC (26 m) | Huntsville, AL (25 m)

E tier – rut between 10 and 25 m (small hills nearby, or hills in the distance, or very distant big hills)

Syracuse,
NY (21 m) | Concord, NH (20 m) | Duluth, MN (20 m) | New Haven, CT (14
m) | Cincinnati, OH (13 m) | Wausau, WI (13 m) | Portland, ME (10 m)

F tier – rut between 0 and 10 m (flatter than a patty)

Nashville,
TN (8.5 m) | New York City (4.3 m) | Kansas City (2.8 m) | Miami, FL
(1.7 m) | Houston (1.6 m), TX | Chicago, IL (0.6 m)

For more locations, here’s a spreadsheet with the rut of every McDonald’s on this map.

—————-

Note: a rut of X doesn’t mean the surrounding mountains rise a height of X above the restaurant.
Instead, a rut of X means that a restaurant’s mountain backdrop is as
impressive as a restaurant at the base of a vertical cliff of height X.
The less steeply the surrounding mountains rise above the restaurant,
the lower the rut.

Also note: rut
only considers rise above surroundings (relative height differences and
angle of elevation). it does not consider absolute elevation, nor the
“aesthetics” of a mountain, nor visibility (or lack thereof) due to
weather or smog.

Attributions:
Gavin Rehkemper (locations), FABDEM (elevation model), Google Earth
Engine (calculations), ESRI (basemap), Kai Xu (rut metric and map)

If you like rut, you’ll probably like its older brother jut even more. Jut measures how impressive, spectacular, or badass a mountain
is—considering both its height above surroundings and steepness. If you
want to find the most impressive mountains near you or worldwide, you
may find the link above to be useful.

Let us know if you have any questions or comments—I’m happy to address them!