This map contains state and county boundaries for the United States for every decennial census from 1790-2020. Original data is from the NHGIS and was simplified to reduce file size using mapshaper.org
Although the founding fathers declared American independence in 1776, and the subsequent Revolutionary War ended in 1783, individual states did not officially join the union until 1787. The first states to ratify the U.S. Constitution were Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in December 1787, and they were joined by the remainder of the thirteen ex-British colonies by 1790. Another three states joined before the turn of the nineteenth century, and there were 45 states by 1900. The final states, Alaska and Hawaii, were admitted to the union in 1959, almost 172 years after the first colonies became federal states. Secession in the American Civil War The issues of slavery and territorial expansion in the mid nineteenth century eventually led to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865. As the U.S. expanded westwards, a moral and economic argument developed about the legality of slavery in these new states; northern states were generally opposed to the expansion of slavery, whereas the southern states (who were economically dependent on slavery) saw this lack of extension as a stepping stone towards nationwide abolition. In 1861, eleven southern states seceded from the Union, and formed the Confederate States of America. When President Lincoln refused to relinquish federal property in the south, the Confederacy attacked, setting in motion the American Civil War. After four years, the Union emerged victorious, and the Confederate States of America was disbanded, and each individual state was readmitted to Congress gradually, between 1866 and 1870. Expansion of other territories Along with the fifty U.S. states, there is one federal district (Washington D.C., the capital city), and fourteen overseas territories, five of which with a resident population (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). In 2019, President Trump inquired about the U.S. purchasing the territory of Greenland from Denmark, and, although Denmark's response indicated that this would be unlikely, this does suggest that the US may be open to further expansion of it's states and territories in the future. There is also a movement to make Washington D.C. the 51st state to be admitted to the union, as citizens of the nation's capital (over 700,000 people) do not have voting representation in the houses of Congress nor control over many local affairs; as of 2020, the U.S. public appears to be divided on the issue, and politicians are split along party lines, as D.C. votes overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee in presidential elections.
This boundary file contains historic county boundaries for which the U.S. Census Bureau tabulated data and was produced by the Minnesota Population Center as part of the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) project. The NHGIS is an National Science Foundation-sponsored project (Grant No. BCS0094908) to create a digital spatial-temporal database of all available historical US aggregate census materials. The available shapefiles on the NHGIS site represent version 1.0 of historical US county boundary files for the 1790 to 2000 censuses. These electronic county boundary files were created by referencing a wide variety of sources and considerable care was taken during their production. U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line Census 2000 files provided the 1990 and 2000 county boundaries and the roads, hydrography, and public land survey lines required to construct historic county boundaries. Locations of historic county boundaries were derived from William Thorndale and William Dollarhide's Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses (1987), various volumes of John H. Long's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries website (http://www.newberry.org/ahcbp/), and other state-specific sources. TIGER/Line spatial features that corresponded to boundaries in these sources were used to construct the proper historic boundaries. When a TIGER/Line feature was not available, we digitized the historic boundary from one of the map sources. Aggregate data from Michael Haines' Historical Demographic, Economic and Social Data: The United States, 1790-1970 (2001) and Richard Forstall's Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790 to 1990 (1996) were used to determine whether a county was enumerated during a given census. If a county was not enumerated, notes from those sources were used to attach the county in question to the county with which it was enumerated. If a county was not enumerated and the notes provide no details, the county was considered 'unattached' and it was merged with other unattached land within the state or territory.
In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).
Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.
Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
License information was derived automatically
This data set is a series of polygons denoting the geologic units mapped in USGS Publication MF-1790, "Geologic Map of the Late Cenozoic Deposits of the Sacramento Valley and Northern Sierran Foothills, California" (Helley and Harwood,1985). This data set was created by scanning the five- original sheets from USGS Publication MF-1790 (Helley and Harwood, 1985), the five sheets were georeferenced individually and the geologic information was digitized using AutoCAD 2006. The accuracy of the digitized lines was deemed to be within acceptable error tolerances, with the digitized lines accurately matching the original drafted lines in USGS Publication MF-1790 (Helley and Harwood, 1985). In general, the width of the contact lines on the paper copy, accounting for scale, ranged up to about 20 meters (66 feet). During the original digitization, minor topological mistakes (such as identical rock units on both sides of a lithologic contact or unclosed polygons) and omissions (such as unidentified lithologic units) were applied according to the best available knowledge. Comparisons were made between the original mylar and colorized field sheets (as available), in addition to the Geologic Map of the Battle Creek Fault Zone, Northern Sacramento Valley, California (USGS Map MF-1298, 1981), the Geologic Map of the Chico Monocline and Northeastern Part of the Sacramento Valley, California (USGS Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1238, 1981), the Geologic Map of the Red Bluff 30' X 60' Quadrangle, California (USGS Geologic Investigation Series Map I-2542, 1995), and the Geologic Map of the Whitmore Quadrangle, California (Geologic Quadrangle Map GQ-993) . The correlation and description of geologic units were excerpted from USGS Publication MF-1790m (Helley and Harwood, 1985).
This data set is a series of polylines denoting fault lines mapped in USGS Publication MF-1790, "Geologic Map of the Late Cenozoic Deposits of the Sacramento Valley and Northern Sierran Foothills, California" (Helley and Harwood,1985). This data set was created by scanning the five- original sheets from USGS Publication MF-1790 (Helley and Harwood, 1985), the five sheets were georeferenced individually and the geologic information was digitized using AutoCAD 2006. The accuracy of the digitized lines was deemed to be within acceptable error tolerances, with the digitized lines accurately matching the original drafted lines in USGS Publication MF-1790 (Helley and Harwood, 1985). In general, the width of the contact lines on the paper copy, accounting for scale, ranged up to about 20 meters (66 feet). During the original digitization, minor topological mistakes (such as identical rock units on both sides of a lithologic contact or unclosed polygons) and omissions (such as unidentified lithologic units) were applied according to the best available knowledge. Comparisons were made between the original mylar and colorized field sheets (as available), in addition to the Geologic Map of the Battle Creek Fault Zone, Northern Sacramento Valley, California (USGS Map MF-1298, 1981), the Geologic Map of the Chico Monocline and Northeastern Part of the Sacramento Valley, California (USGS Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1238, 1981), and the Geologic Map of the Red Bluff 30' X 60' Quadrangle, California (USGS Geologic Investigation Series Map I-2542, 1995). The correlation and description of geologic units were excerpted from USGS Publication MF-1790m (Helley and Harwood, 1985).
Historical population as enumerated and corrected from 1790 through 2020. North Carolina was one of the 13 original States and by the time of the 1790 census had essentially its current boundaries. The Census is mandated by the United States Constitution and was first completed for 1790. The population has been counted every ten years hence, with some limitations. In 1790 census coverage included most of the State, except for areas in the west, parts of which were not enumerated until 1840. The population for 1810 includes Walton County, enumerated as part of Georgia although actually within North Carolina. Historical populations shown here reflect the population of the respective named county and not necessarily the population of the area of the county as it was defined for a particular census. County boundaries shown in maps reflect boundaries as defined in 2020. Historic boundaries for some counties may include additional geographic areas or may be smaller than the current geographic boundaries. Notes below list the county or counties with which the population of a currently defined county were enumerated historically (Current County: Population counted in). The current 100 counties have been in place since the 1920 Census, although some modifications to the county boundaries have occurred since that time. For historical county boundaries see: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries Project (newberry.org)County Notes: Note 1: Total for 1810 includes population (1,026) of Walton County, reported as a Georgia county but later determined to be situated in western North Carolina. Total for 1890 includes 2 Indians in prison, not reported by county. Note 2: Alexander: *Iredell, Burke, Wilkes. Note 3: Avery: *Caldwell, Mitchell, Watauga. Note 4: Buncombe: *Burke, Rutherford; see also note 22. Note 5: Caldwell: *Burke, Wilkes, Yancey. Note 6: Cleveland: *Rutherford, Lincoln. Note 7: Columbus: *Bladen, Brunswick. Note 8: Dare: *Tyrrell, Currituck, Hyde. Note 9: Hoke: *Cumberland, Robeson. Note 10: Jackson: *Macon, Haywood. Note 11: Lee: *Moore, Chatham. Note 12: Lenoir: *Dobbs (Greene); Craven. Note 13: McDowell: *Burke, Rutherford. Note 14: Madison: *Buncombe, Yancey. Note 15: Mitchell: *Yancey, Watauga. Note 16: Pamlico: *Craven, Beaufort. Note 17: Polk: *Rutherford, Henderson. Note 18: Swain: *Jackson, Macon. Note 19: Transylvania: *Henderson, Jackson. Note 20: Union: *Mecklenburg, Anson. Note 21: Vance: *Granville, Warren, Franklin. Note 22: Walton: Created in 1803 as a Georgia county and reported in 1810 as part of Georgia; abolished after a review of the State boundary determined that its area was located in North Carolina. By 1820 it was part of Buncombe County. Note 23: Watauga: *Ashe, Yancey, Wilkes; Burke. Note 24: Wilson: *Edgecombe, Nash, Wayne, Johnston. Note 25: Yancey: *Burke, Buncombe. Note 26: Alleghany: *Ashe. Note 27: Haywood: *Buncombe. Note 28: Henderson: *Buncombe. Note 29: Person: Caswell. Note 30: Clay: Cherokee. Note 31: Graham: Cherokee. Note 32: Harnett: Cumberland. Note 33: Macon: Haywood.
Note 34: Catawba: Lincoln. Note 35: Gaston: Lincoln. Note 36: Cabarrus: Mecklenburg.
Note 37: Stanly: Montgomery. Note 38: Pender: New Hanover. Note 39: Alamance: Orange.
Note 40: Durham: Orange, Wake. Note 41: Scotland: Richmond. Note 42: Davidson: Rowan. Note 43: Davie: Rowan.Note 44: Forsyth: Stokes. Note 45: Yadkin: Surry.
Note 46: Washington: Tyrrell.Note 47: Ashe: Wilkes. Part III. Population of Counties, Earliest Census to 1990The 1840 population of Person County, NC should be 9,790. The 1840 population of Perquimans County, NC should be 7,346.
This data set is a series of polylines denoting the symbology for landslides; generally showing direction of movement downhill. These features were added to the landslide deposits mapped in USGS Publication MF-1790, "Geologic Map of the Late Cenozoic Deposits of the Sacramento Valley and Northern Sierran Foothills, California" (Helley and Harwood,1985). This data set was created by scanning the five- original sheets from USGS Publication MF-1790 (Helley and Harwood, 1985), the five sheets were georeferenced individually and the geologic information was digitized using AutoCAD 2006. The accuracy of the digitized lines was deemed to be within acceptable error tolerances, with the digitized lines accurately matching the original drafted lines in USGS Publication MF-1790 (Helley and Harwood, 1985). In general, the width of the contact lines on the paper copy, accounting for scale, ranged up to about 20 meters (66 feet). During the original digitization, minor topological mistakes (such as identical rock units on both sides of a lithologic contact or unclosed polygons) and omissions (such as unidentified lithologic units) were applied according to the best available knowledge. Comparisons were made between the original mylar and colorized field sheets (as available), in addition to the Geologic Map of the Battle Creek Fault Zone, Northern Sacramento Valley, California (USGS Map MF-1298, 1981), the Geologic Map of the Chico Monocline and Northeastern Part of the Sacramento Valley, California (USGS Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1238, 1981), and the Geologic Map of the Red Bluff 30' X 60' Quadrangle, California (USGS Geologic Investigation Series Map I-2542, 1995). The correlation and description of geologic units were excerpted from USGS Publication MF-1790m (Helley and Harwood, 1985).
Not seeing a result you expected?
Learn how you can add new datasets to our index.
This map contains state and county boundaries for the United States for every decennial census from 1790-2020. Original data is from the NHGIS and was simplified to reduce file size using mapshaper.org