Colorful cartograms by the US Census Bureau is like using the visual style of a retro 8-bit video game to learn about population trends, and I love it. Each square equals 50,000 people, but feel free to imagine the squares represent 50,000 Kirbys .
Here's the US population distribution in 2010:
(US Census Bureau)
In 1950, California hadn't yet boomed. It's funny to see how relatively big New York is to it and to Texas:
(US Census Bureau)
In 1890, the country was about a sixth the size of today's population:
(US Census Bureau)
Correction : The correct name of these maps is cartograms, not cartographs.
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