I saw something similar recently (so I must've found it somewhat interesting)

A video of many maps, including the one you show.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GGWWKz_Losw

Most of the population lives east of the Dry Line, that's where most of the water is...

I think it's pretty much the same for Canada. Most of our population lives in Ontario. The city of Toronto alone and the same population as the province of Alberta.

I've seen a similar video before - they need to move the southern part of the line to San Antonio (which they did in the video I saw) or even Laredo, which are significantly west of Austin.

Laredo, however, is very definitely a desert city, but San Antonio is not.

In Texas, I was taught that Fort Worth is where the West begins and that Abilene is where the West is at. My grandparents lived between Ft. Worth and Abilene, slightly closer to Abilene, and I used to go there with my grandmother to shop.

Deb, is it still true that 90% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the border?

I agree about terrain being a factor. If you've ever flown over those western areas, it looks like mostly mountains and deserts.

bpath - yep. Climate plays a role and the CP rail finished in 1885 tying eastern Canada to BC was built along the border. So as a transportation link people tended to settle along the railway line.

The notion of there being a so-called "dry line" effect, separating the continent's distinct rainfall regions, is interesting to learn. Thanks Kennswoods. I thought a boundary, however straight or wiggly, separating the arid West from the rest of the country was at or near the Rocky Mountains and faded somewhat at the southern end as the mountains do and knowing that the western side of Texas is dry. This was an default assumption on my part, not based on anything in particular.

I think there are more factors contributing to the population distribution pattern than simply precipitation.

You're correct! Railroads are the next things that affected growth. Once refrigeration caught on and railroads could transport things, where they went is where people lived.

P.S. this is why hog futures matter

Refrigeration (air conditioning) is also why people can live in a desert and other climates with terrible heat This requires electricity, along with water -- along with transport for food and goods.

We're armed and ready fer ya' here along Lake Michigan!

rob, I think the effect of railroads on population distribution vanished a very long time ago. Many factors were involved but the spread of car ownership after WW2 had a big impact. Widespread passenger travel by train was all but gone by the end of the 1950s.

People move to new regions for a variety of reasons while many others stay where they are for different reasons. I think the consequences of those in the second group play a large role, for moves in all directions.

Not at all. The effect of the railroads was important for westward growth at one time (especially into the Plains, that was well west of the population center point at the time). Chicago, the East-West railroad hub, became at one time the second largest city in the US. Railroad expansion was all but over by the beginning of the Depression, nearly 100 years ago. From that point forward, other than war years, rail use plummeted and never recovered. The transportation routes had an initial effect. That's over now.

Why, other than with a few notable examples (the Sunbelt effect and a few others), have people not moved more?

Don't take it personally......she likes to argue with everyone.

Haha, a touch of sarcasm? I take no anonymous comments personally.

Happy?

https://www.thoughtco.com/effect-of-railroads-on-the-united-states-104724

It wouldn't let me update

People tend to not move to far from home. Once a single family settles, only a few descendants will move far away. It can take a few generations for a family to disappear from a region.

So let me ask you this bpath, almost all of my father's family settled in Connecticut. Yet, they've been in Nashville for generations? What could possibly have attracted them?

I'm only half serious. They're bunches of us that are in Middle Tennessee now? So strange.

My father's family is mysterious, but my mother's family is very well established here. We bought our land from Andrew Jackson, if that tells you how long we've been here!

"Happy?"

Sure, I'm always happy. Did you read the linked page before posting it? It covers what I said, the substantial effect of railroads was all but over by the 1920s. It had good coverage of the Civil War, though, and buffalo hunting on the plains.

Even the few topics mentioned in that piece weren't well considered. It talks of Davis, CA as an example of a settlement owing its existence to a railroad line. Davis today has a population of about 60K, mostly because of the university there. Travel 15 minutes east of Davis and you reach Sacramento, CA. A city of over 500K that developed because it was the western terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad, the one completed when the Golden Spike was ceremoniously laid in Utah in the late 1860s, I believe. Beforehand, Sac was a small town.

Water transportation and railroads are the reason most large cities are where they are today. Numerous scattered small towns (10K-30K) are all that is needed to support agriculture in the great plains. What the cities became in the 20th century is more so based on industry but rail access to agricultural and industrial areas remains very important to this day.

"People tend to not move to far from home. Once a single family settles, only a few descendants will move far away."

About 25% of Americans move away from their home city (or near their home city)......I wouldn't call that "only a few", but I guess it depends on how big the families are.

I do find this very interesting . I only watch about 2 minutes of it but will look at it again later.

I think all the comments on this thread are good contributions to the discussion.

Once a town or city has been established, and is doing well economically, why, barring some disaster, would it be abandoned to start a new one elsewhere? And maybe in our lifetimes, more people have moved away from their origins, but what about 100 years ago? Lots of communities have been around longer than that.

My mom's family all lived in the same town, some on the same street, for several generations before they started to drift apart - and most still live within the same state.

My mom was the exception - she moved to NYC out of college, got married and then moved here to FL. Now we're an outpost for the rest of her family; we still remain in close contact with most.

And the reason she and my dad moved here early in the 1960s was that my dad's father and mother had retired here from New York. Both homes are still in our family, and only a few minutes apart by car.

Glad to see Lone Jack mention water as transportation. Some of my ancestors sailed from France to NY, then took the newly opened Erie Canal to Cincinnati. (The canal trip was delayed while they waited for one boy's broken leg to heal after he'd tried climbing a mast. Some things -- little boys -- never change!)

Once a town or city has been established, and is doing well economically, why, barring some disaster, would it be abandoned to start a new one elsewhere?

Back in the 1800s many boom towns popped up when gold, silver, or other precious metals were discovered in the area. Some became ghost towns when the mining dried up while others survive to this day.

I would consider the collapse of an economic base to be a disaster.

Do you mean like the Detroit implosion?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/23/detroit-decline-distinctively-capitalist-failure

I would consider the collapse of an economic base to be a disaster.

For sure it is, but some towns/cities that were initially established mostly due to mining were able to re-invent themselves after the mining ended. San Francisco was able to survive post the gold rush because it had become a major port and a railroad terminus. Cripple Creek, CO and several other boom towns did not survive after the silver ran out but CC was later revived as a tourist destination.

There are many examples of cities and towns that depended on one industry, one factory, etc. that suffered major job losses and unemployment when significant employment sites close. Even on a smaller scale, communities that developed because of the presence of military bases suffered greatly as the multitude of bases have been closed or repurposed in the last 30 years.

Detroit is an extreme example because of its dependance on one major industry, the auto industry that had to massively restructure and reimagine its operations to survive. But the same thing happened all over the Rust Belt and elsewhere. Detroit's population has shrunk dramatically but in many other places where employment has always been marginal or dependent on a few major employers that close, people often remain. I find that puzzling.

The linked Guardian article is incredibly slanted and biased. In Europe, all newspapers have unabashed political stances that directly influence reporting. The Guardian's position is on the Labor site of the UK spectrum - that's fine but it influences the tone and approach to reporting on matters such as this. A job, any job, comes with no promises of forever employment. When changes are needed, jobs can be relocated and workers terminated. That's just how it is.

But you have to admit, what happened in the rust belt is how we ended up with the presidency that we did in 2017-2021. They felt there was a promise that was reneged on. I agree it's slanted (in this case one sided), but I wasn't looking for unbiased reporting of it, just anything that acknowledged what happened. Doesn't matter the focus of the article, the outcome is still the same.

Re: rob's comment. It's time for the US to look forward to an improved democracy, not back to a memory-burnished supremacy, says an opinion piece in today's Chicago Tribune. It addresses the futility of a nation (the UK *and* the US in this case) looking backwards after their status in the world is in decline.

Jed Esty is the author of two books on superpower nostalgia -- nostalgia he says is most dangerous when it refers to an ideal that never existed: Imaginary homelands, as Salman Rushdie calls them.

Worth linking, if someone can. "How (not) to be an aging superpower"

" But you have to admit, what happened in the rust belt is how we ended up with the presidency that we did in 2017-2021. They felt there was a promise that was reneged on. "

No, I don't see it that way at all. The decline of the Rust Belt is decades old. I think what happened two elections ago was due to factors very, very different and unrelated.

You don't have to see it that way elmer, political experts saw it that way.