The map above was created by reddit user Tiny_Big_4998 who explains what it shows:
It’s always been hard for me to wrap my head around the true scale of population density in the American West.
I’m used to seeing maps on a county or state level, which really dilutes things through aggregation.
I see that a county has 20,000 people, and think “Wow, that’s really small.” Then, I find out that 17,000 of them live in 2 or 3 small towns, and think “holy shit, that’s unimaginably small.”
This map shows the largest possible (non-contiguous and absolutely illegal) congressional district in every western state.
Some, like California, were shockingly uncrowded (with 1/52nd of the population occupying ~85% of the space), while others like Montana or Idaho see half the population occupying well over 99.5% of the total area.
Oklahoma and Texas were surprising for the opposite reason— even the rural areas in the western half of the state were still pretty dense.
What do you think about the map?
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