Why are the counties in the West of the USA larger than in the East?

Why are the counties in the West of the USA larger than in the East?

Why are the counties squares?

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Most of the states in the west aren't as inhabitated as in the east.
Nobody cares if you draw random lines in the desert I guess.

>Why are the counties in the West of the USA larger than in the East?
More sparsely populated. Also they're more irregular in shape because they straddle mountains and valleys.

>Why are the counties squares?
Those in Iowa and other Great Plains states are squares beause it's the Great Plains. There really isn't any other way to draw them.

California has a higher population density than West Virginia.

People populated those states last, so there's a lot of open space. It might look the reverse if China or Japan had colonized first.

The people are literally all in LA, SD and the Bay Area.

SoCal alone is 22 million people, and most of it is desert.

Another factor would be ease of transportation when the counties were created. CA's counties were created later than WV's when transportation was more advanced and people could get to the county seat quicker.

>More sparsely populated
Not always
NYC is split between 5 counties, LA has a county for itself alone plus many of its suburbs.

there is a youtube video that explains this very well

It wouldn't, the east is more evenly populable and just more sustainable for people in general than the west. Besides Puget Sound, the Willamette Valley, the Central Valley and the Palouse there really isn't much on the west coast you can populate. The whole of the east coast on the other hand can sustain big cities.

California is the exception, not the rule. The western coastline is inhabited, but going East from there, it’s basically a whole lot of nothing until you get to Texas aside from a few cities here and there.

So? LA city limits has one fourth of NYC's city limits population. And keep in mind that LA county is the most populous in the States, and five of SoCal's counties are among the top few (LA, Orange, SB, Riverside, SD). It's really an outlier.

Counties in the east are smaller, because they were inhabited before the industrialisation. The general idea was that everyone had to be able to travel horseback to the seat of the county in less than 1 day, so the size of the countries had to be smaller.
Meanwhile, the counties in the west were mainly colonised during the industrialisation, so people were already able to travel to the seat of the county by automobile/train.

Arizona has many people too. Phoenix is one of the largest cities of the USA now.

Phoenix is a VERY new city that's only expanding because of the Sun Belt boom (due to a/c and shit). Maricopa won't be split up now because people don't need horses to travel anymore.

>And keep in mind that LA county is the most populous in the States, and five of SoCal's counties are among the top few (LA, Orange, SB, Riverside, SD).
Exactly, that's why it isn't based on population, otherwise the counties of California would be as small as the counties of the Northeast.

Stop nitpicking you autist. It’s easier to just show you.

No they wouldn't. I bloody said SoCal's counties are outliers. Counties follow a normal distribution in population you retard.

They stopped giving a fuck

To add on, growth factors of LA include:
>oil
>Imperial Valley irrigation
>WWII
>Hollywood
All of these are relatively modern.

Also, LA happens to be the only big city in an area where drawing county borders is not easy.

The fact that half the outliers are all in the same place isn't a coincidence, it lends credence to the fact that the LA metropolitan area is a relatively new city that grew in modern times kickstarted by the Hollywood and the San Francisco earthquake and fueled by the Hoover dam. Both SoCal and Maricopa are anomalies and should be treated as such.

The counties east of the Mississippi were drawn up by state planners. The counties west were drawn up by settlers who used more natural borders.

Won't say the Mississippi, but the Continental Divide. Especially the early ones like those in the Willamette Valley.
Remember that Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa are west of the Mississippi.

Why are you upside down moon pollacks so well-spoken?

Half of Singaporeans on this board are retarded-as-fuck posters m8.

Why don't you redraw your counties now in 2017?

Because half of the West is uninhabitable due to the Rocky Mountains

That's going to be a massive logistical problem. You'll have to move the county seats, county governments, hold snap elections for new counties, etc. And three states barely use counties anymore.

That would be a political shitstorm

1. Way too much incentive to gerrymander. Seriously, now? Do you want to destroy the country while you're at it? (don't answer)

2. Land surveying has advanced enormously since 1835 and the necessity to divide up existing counties is not as strong as it used to be.

3. Agricultural is no longer the main focus of the nation's economy and county land use policies are primarily a matter of rural owners.

>And three states barely use counties anymore.
Which are?

Most of those posting under the US flag on Sup Forums, are self-hating whites and millennial progressives of the following type:

youtube.com/watch?v=cKEhxRa9aSM

They desire the transformation of the United States, which they consider the most racist country to ever exist, into a non-white country, and are actively leading the charge to turn it more diverse and multicultural, while marginalizing the white males and reducing their social and economic power. Many of them are members of Antifa, and all of them fully support the protests taking place on college campuses, where they receive their liberal arts degrees. They consider it important to include PoC in all forms of media because it helps people especially in Western countries to make the psychological adjustments that are necessary for the transformation of their countries into multicultural societies.

They despise white America more than the most anti-Americans on Sup Forums are capable of, and are the most eager proponents of its destruction. The leading figures of the anti-American and anti-white intellectual movement in the US, are almost entirely composed of white males. They are united in their belief in and support for the extermination of the white working class demographic in the US. They consider it, just like the extermination of the bourgeoise in Marxist ideology, to be an inevitable step in the creation of a post-racial, multicultural United States, where the power is no longer dominated by white men, but distributed among women, ethnic and sexual minorities.

They are known by many names - bugmen, numale, soyboy, yoga shrimp, incel - in their desire to be recognized as allies to People of Color, women, transsexuals, and homosexuals.

If it were up to them, they would destroy all of America between the Rockies and the Alleghenies, as they consider them to be full of rural, Trump-voting subhumans who must be exterminated to realize their vision of the future America.

MA (for very few purposes), RI, CT (both of which don't use counties at all)

Bugger off kiddy diddler, the children in your basement are waiting for you. I thought you were gone but I was wrong.

>from a self-declared pedophile and faggot

One more word and I rape your chinky ass like you clearly desire

Wouldn't want a Sup Forumstard to do that to me, even if he were a cute boi. And since when have I been a paedo you projecting nonce. Kids are absolutely repulsive.