Overview
Baldwin Street is a residential street in the North East Valley suburb of Dunedin, recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s steepest street. The street extends roughly 350 meters up the side of Signal Hill and rises about 70 meters from its lower end to the top, and its steepest section reaches a gradient of about 34.8%.
The street’s unusual gradient resulted from early planning that imposed a grid pattern without fully accounting for Dunedin’s hilly terrain. Surveyor Charles Kettle laid out much of the city’s street plan during the 19th century. Baldwin Street was named for William Baldwin, an Otago provincial politician and newspaper founder associated with the subdivision of the surrounding land.
Baldwin Street was first recognized by Guinness as the world’s steepest street in 1987. It briefly lost the title in 2019 to Ffordd Pen Llech in Wales, but regained it in 2020 after Guinness revised its measurement standard to use the street’s centerline.
Quick Facts
- Status
- Existing
- Locality or neighborhood
- Dunedin
- Country
- New Zealand
- Postal code
- 9010
- Coordinates
- -45.848027177256, 170.53268173878024 Google Maps · Apple Maps
