A GIF Illustrating The Spread Of Cities In America Over The Last 400 Years

Today the amount of cities in the United States of America with more than a million residents is a double digit number. But all of those cities — as well as all the cities smaller than them — had to start at zero. This cool animated map by Redditor GrzegorzusLudi shows exactly when 2,500 American cities were founded:

And rather than placing thousands of dots by hand, GrzegorzusLudi used some clever programming and Wikipedia to get the job done easier:

"I created a script searching over wikipedia sites. I was searching for sections with words "Settled", "Founded", "Incorporated", etc. and dates after them."

Some stuff to note:

• Obviously, Native Americans built many large civilizations and settlements long before 1570. This map mainly charts cities settled by European immigrants.
• Rather than using political state boarders, this map also includes territorial waters, which is why states like Florida, Michigan and Louisiana look a little odd and California's beach towns all appear to be several miles inland.
• Santa Fe, New Mexico pops up much earlier than other settlements in the Southwest. Officially founded and named capital of its Spanish province in 1610, it's the oldest state capital in the US.
• Look out for San Diego around 1705, making it the first city founded on America's West coast.
• Northern Michigan also makes an early appearance on the map considering it's so far inland, but that's largely thanks to French explorers, traders and settlers coming from Quebec and the ease of access to Michigan via lakes and rivers.
• Albany, New York pops up pretty early, around 1620. But the rest of upstate New York lags behind until the very late 1700s, which is when the Erie Canal was proposed. By the time it was finished in 1825, you can see a neat line of dots cross straight through the middle of the state.

[Via Reddit]