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The One Minute Geographer: The Great Plains — Big Counties, Tiny People
We’re looking at the population of the Great Plains using counties along the 100-degree meridian as illustrative of the region. The map above shows the 54 counties that touch the meridian.
Most of these are large counties with small, even tiny, populations. In area they add up 60,000 square miles — about the size of West Virginia. In total, the 54 counties are home to 726,000 people, more than the populations of Vermont or Wyoming!
When I say large counties, they average about 1,100 square miles. How big is that? Almost the size of Rhode Island’s 1,200 square miles. Webb County, the largest, and the southernmost county on the strip, is almost three times the size of Rhode Island. Population density on the strip is about 12 people per square mile, about the same density as South Dakota.
We know the Great Plains as a whole has had declining population for decades, but the strip managed to eke out 1.7% population growth from 2010 to 2020, although that is still way below the national figure of 7.4%.
But there’s a catch: more than half (57%) of all the people on this strip live in two metropolitan counties in Texas: Taylor County, where Abilene is located, and Webb County where Laredo is. Amazingly, of the 54 counties in the strip, 46 (85%) lost…
