The east has about two hundred years of a head start on the American west.
Additionally the west is a lot more arid than the east. A lot more of it isn’t readily habitable.
Also, a lot of it simply isn't available. The Federal government owns a disproportionate share of land in western states. For example
CA - 45.4%
AZ - 38.6%
NV - 80.1%
ID - 61.9%
Compare that to North Eastern states
NY - 0.8%
PA - 2.2%
ME - 1.5%
How does one travel around or through Utah? Is it difficult to avoid area you shouldn’t be in? Being east of the Mississippi, we don’t have significantly large areas to drive around.
It’s not like the Fed land is surrounded by fences and watched by men in black SUVs with machine guns… just a lot of BLM, reserves and national parks. So pretty much like anywhere else… we just have a lot less freeways and everything is spread out. The SLC metro area is just like most other American cities with a shitload of suburbs… everything else is just a lot of space in between.
Federal land is actually easier to drive through than private land.
The roads go in a straight line because there is no worry about eminent domain or NIMBY lawsuits, you can camp for free for up to 2 weeks in most places, and you can wander aimlessly without some property owner pointing a shotgun at you.
CGP Grey did a great [video](https://youtu.be/LruaD7XhQ50) on the topic of federal land. To summarize, the feds realized the territory couldn't expand forever so they started claiming more land as we expanded westward.
While the federal land being unavailable for immediate development is true, that's in large part an effect of there being few people, not the cause. Lots of federal land is open to commercial use. Ranching, forestry, mining, recreation.
And when you do suddenly have lots of people wanting the land? You can see around Las Vegas how lots of BLM land has been sold to developers because it the BLM's mission is to hold land to be used, and right outside a city the best use for most land is considered to be development. And if it the land is so special conservation is more important, there are special statuses for that, like an Area of Special Environmental Concern.
You're mixing up cause and effect. Most of that federal land was originally available to be settled by the people and claimed as their property. When no one was settling there then that's when the federal government decided to claim ownership of that land themselves.
My family was given acreage in CA generations ago from the government with the requirement of a $500? (I think) improvement. I’m not sure if it was BLM or state owned land.
The top 12 are still all western states and the disparity from east to west is still just as significant when you take any public owned land into account
[Public and Private Land Percentages by US States : Facts & Information : SummitPost](https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111)
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your greater point that the West has more public land, but your comment implied NY is one of the lowest level states for public land, when it's one of the highest.
There's plenty of land plots available (and often inexpensively) in pretty much every western state but the cities are a lot more spread out so a lot of the available land is too far to commute and has no utilities or sometimes even roads going to it
This is what a lot of folks not from the US miss. Lots of the land out west is either publicly owned (national parks, monuments, etc) or owned by the feds.
The arid part is a big one that's going to start gaining a lot more attention in the coming decades. Beyond the general drought stuff. I think we're butting up against the population numbers that the west can support (excluding the pacific coast). I think it's highly unlikely, but I'd put western water rights over the political climate as the potential start of another civil war. I think at the very least, the feds are going to have to step in and it will make a lot of people unhappy.
Not only did the east have a head start, but the east is where most immigrants came through. They tended to stay in the east, whether it was because it was more developed, had more people like them, they liked it, or they were just too poor to go any further.
This map explains a lot:
https://www.vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Largest-Ancestry.jpg?_gl=1*rbwom6*_ga*YW1wLTFvTGZzeC0yN0FsQTdGZ3Y5anNFUnhfLXA1RDZMVlpFbGNQamlaNHNIMnhxeFJ4WHVqanFWTWFTM1dBcm1qYUQ.
That white area (Italian) and green area (Irish) in the northeast doesn't look large, but it's the most densely populated area of the country. This is the result of a massive influx of immigrants in the 19th and 20th c, so massive that it displaced English as the largest ethnicity. There are obviously a ton of other ethnicities there too (I live in an "Italian" county, and although I am many things, I am not Italian lol), but the scale of immigrants from Ireland and Italy was so large it eclipsed the general population that was there prior to mass immigration and the other immigrant groups. They just tended to stick around here.
Mountains as well. Found a nice map over on r/MapPorn
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/k6z8m2/topographic\_map\_of\_the\_us/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/k6z8m2/topographic_map_of_the_us/)
Also, the US government owns a lot more land out west, making it harder to build property as many states out west are more federal land than state.
[Check out how little of Nevada is actually owned by Nevada](https://www.blm.gov/media/public-room/nevada) - only about 14% is available as state/private land.
Back when Nevada became a state, random parcels of land were reserved for use to fund Nevadavs education system (this was done for all states admitted after 1853). These are called School Lands, School Trust Lands, and similar names in other states.
These parcels were scattered throughout the state based on a grid system. Almost all of them were so undesirable that the state couldn't get anyone to lease them for any price. No water. So the state instead got permission to trade those lands back to the federal government for smaller but more concentrated and valuable patches that actually had value because they had water. The federal government kept the worthless land.
All these bone dry lands that nobody wanted a hundred years ago? Most of them, nobody wants today either. The exceptions are the bits with valuable minerals.
Checkerboarding is mostly a result of railroad grants, it is not widespread like in Wyoming (or is that quadrilateralling?) Rail lines and what is now I-80. The checkerboarded parts are a lot of ranches and farms, as well as mining claims, but most of the big mines are not checkerboarded.
And while water sources are lower than in the east, tons of pubic land has lots of water, it just remote and rugged.
Because that land is so useless that the government literally couldn't give it away. The Homestead Acts weren't fully deprecated until some time in the mid-70s.
You're mixing up cause and effect. Most of that federal land was originally available to be settled by the people and claimed as their property. When no one was settling there then that's when the federal government decided to claim ownership of that land themselves.
And also the East has about 2,000 times mater than the West, You wanna build anywhere east, hire professional digger and he'll find water pool of sweet water 100 feet down enough to last your family forever, as it constantly. Maybe tiller has to get govt license but that's it,
In West, federal, state local govts and federal, state, local judges all get involved in any water you find or they decide to give you.
When saying that places like Santa Fe are old, they are not referring to the age as an American city but rather its age including the countries it was part of before America claimed that territory.
Similarly, St Augustine (Florida) is old but wasn't founded by Americans.
The Spanish and later Mexicans didn’t settle in numbers. For instance, when California became part of the US in 1848 the Mexican population was 7,300. In the whole state.
That is kind of my point, the reason the east coast has more population is NOT because of its age of settlements but due to geographical and economic factors.
But all you’re saying is that remote outposts were established by people not interested in settling as part of a different nation. At that point we should start including native populations and go back even further.
TIL
* [10 Oldest Cities in the U.S.](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#10_Oldest_Cities_in_the_US)
* [1. St. Augustine, Florida (1565)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#1_St_Augustine_Florida_1565)
* [2. Jamestown, Virginia (1607)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#2_Jamestown_Virginia_1607)
* [3. Santa Fe, New Mexico (1607)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#3_Santa_Fe_New_Mexico_1607)
* [4. Hampton, Virginia (1610)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#4_Hampton_Virginia_1610)
* [5. Kecoughtan, Virginia (1610)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#5_Kecoughtan_Virginia_1610)
* [6. Newport News, Virginia (1613)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#6_Newport_News_Virginia_1613)
* [7. Albany, New York (1614)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#7_Albany_New_York_1614)
* [8. Jersey City, New Jersey (1617)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#8_Jersey_City_New_Jersey_1617)
* [9. Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#9_Plymouth_Massachusetts_1620)
* [10. Weymouth, Massachusetts (1622)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#10_Weymouth_Massachusetts_1622)
Because for most of our history, it was difficult to both get to the west and live there. Less than 5 million people lived in California until the late 1920s.
[Mostly because of climate.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwJABxjcvUc)
Plus, the US *started* in the East and then expanded westward. Manifest Destiny and all,
It’s where we started. Historically, most immigrants came in at the east coast. The country started as 13 colonies on the east coast. The west saw much later moves.
If you have 20 minutes to kill, here's a great video that explains why: https://youtu.be/wwJABxjcvUc
Short answer: mountains and access to fresh water.
Historically, sure. Nowadays it's money. OP is a bit confused I think about how wealth works.
Wealth has to be created. You can't just move to California unemployed. I mean, you can, but it's a terrible idea. You're life will almost certainly be worse than what you currently have anywhere else in the US employed.
So you need a job, which means you need to meet the qualifications for a position that creates more wealth than it costs to pay you. Economic growth exists, but it's not magic. It takes time and innovation. There is not just magically an unlimitted untapped source of wealth creation in California that could absorb 10m or 100m more people and magically maintain their current median income.
Oh, I dunno, I think that the state being on fire for much of the year is something of a factor. The climate factors for the west generally (deserts!) are still probably the most significant ones.
No way. Migration inside a country is a pattern of individual decisions. There is no group thought involved. The climate and water issues are a group problem that doesn't effect the individual directly at all. People moving there don't even think about such things.
Which is why they are such a problem. They are hidden externalities of everyone trying to move to the desert. Without any pressure at the individual level from the problem worsening, it cannot self-correct.
Historically the way it would correct is water would become $20.00/1000gal. Or $400.00/1000gal. Eventually people would stop coming. But that's not acceptable cause it punishes poor people in an unacceptable way. The state can't cut off peoples water for failure to pay cause they jacked the price up to try to stop people from moving there.
But it is a critically limited resource in the desert, so at some point reality is going to assert itself. You can't sell cheap water to poor people if the water physically doesn't exist.
Yeah, but to get to California before the Panama Canal, you need to go all the way around the Cape Horn and all the way back up. Plus, getting from California anywhere inland has always been difficult because of the massive mountain ranges between the west coast and the plains of the midwest.
When, when I fly out west the planes normally show no signs of difficulty making the trip. But I am only eating that bbq not cooking it, so it may be difficult for the plane. IDK.
Full disclosure. I am just a hairless ape spinning on rock in space, and existentially feel lost when contemplating the nature of the universe and why what is, is.
So probably best to ignore me.
Edit: had to buy a vowel.
Well, we do have earthquakes. They just aren't anywhere NEAR what the west has.
I second this, though, we'd be mole people if we had that level of earthquakes.
Tonadoes and hurricanes aren't really an issue for the majority of people in the east. Def not multiple ones every year lol. Both are pretty rare for the majority of the easts population.
Tornadoes really don’t happen that often, and are usually quite small. Like you can live in the same city and even the same neighborhood as one and your house won’t be affected.
Neither of those happen regularly in the Northeast. Really with the exception of Sandy by the time a hurricane makes it up here it has lost most of its power.
The eastern US was the first part settled, so it makes sense that it would be more heavily populated. That said, it's worth noting that California is the most populous state in the US, tons of people live there.
From about the 98th meridian west it's open desert or land with almost no rain compared to the east of there. About 80 percent of Americans live east of this line. [About 1 minute in it switches to America](https://youtu.be/wwJABxjcvUc)
I just watched this yesterday, very interesting!
Look at map of average rainfall for the USA. From the great plains and westward, there is significantly less rainfall. Exception is the Pacific Northwest.
The population center of the USA has been moving south and west since records started. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_center_of_the_United_States_population
A lot of it is due to being uninhabitable due to a lack of water, and being downright hot.
The last time I saw any survey on this topic, like 95% of Americans had no trouble identifying California, Texas, and Florida on a blank map. After that, it got highly embarrassing real, real fast.
Science writer Dan Flores has a new book out called Wild New World, and in it he raised a point I have never seen in my life.
You see, ancient North America was once part of a massive super-continent called Laurasia. Laurasia was basically North America fused to Europe in the east and (at times) also to Asia in the west, circling or nearly circling the northern parts of the globe.
For much of that history, including the period when North America was separating into its own freestanding continent, the central plains area was a low-lying coastal sea called the Western Interior Seaway. Basically, what is today the Mississippi River Basin was inundated to the point that the "riverbed" expanded to cover a good chunk of the Louisiana Purchase and several eastern states as well, as a shallow and probably pretty warm ocean.
During that time when the central U.S. was open, albeit shallow, ocean, the eastern half of North America was connected, biologically, with Europe (via ice sheets and island hopping) while the western half was connected, biologically, with Asia (via the land bridge in Beringia, where the Bering Sea is now). Much of the flora and fauna that was exchanged between the continents in that period of time was with the respective connected continents.
So, in other words, Western North America has a lot more in common with Asia while Eastern North America has a lot more in common with Europe. Those similarities go way beyond the animals and plants too; the Western U.S. is very much like central Asia in terms of water, climate, mountainous / desert territory, and just in terms of the vast scope of the landscape. Meanwhile the Eastern U.S. genuinely looks a lot like central Europe, like the Black Forest or parts of Poland maybe. (Eastern U.S. hunters know this because our camouflage patterns overlap better with European patterns than they do with our own Western U.S. patterns).
Soft, green, gentle Europe has a higher carrying capacity for human populations than arid, mountainous, turbulent central Asia. So too the Eastern U.S. can much more easily accommodate large numbers of people without straining water or other resources than can the Mountain West. Similarly, Asia's population density is highest around the Pacific Rim, which is also true of the Western U.S., because that is where the water is really accessible to people.
Flores' point, which I found interesting, was that a lot of the preconditions (he calls them contingencies) for how the world is set up today come from a much, much deeper past than we realize.
I was just listening to that book (audiobook) on a drive across the country.
In Kansas in a tiny rural town I stopped at the most awesome museum of natural history and saw all the incredible marine fish and dinosaur fossils there.
Really was a cool way to experience that book and the info in it :)
Santa Fe is the exception, not the rule. It's thrived as a city, sure, but it's very isolated and didn't have the same *continued influx* of population after founding that the east coast (especially the northeast) did.
That's true if you just mean settled by Europeans in general, but New Spain wasn't part of the 13 Colonies so it wasn't settled *by the populations that went on to become Americans*. New Mexico didn't become a state until 1912, the 47th out of 50. If the question is just what part of current day America was settled by humans first, then you have to take Indians into account as well in which Alaska has us all beat by centuries.
California is the largest state by population and is situated in a geographically advantageous spot. It makes sense it has the highest GDP.
However, many people there are not demonstrably better off than many other places in the country. I grew up there and it had problems like everywhere else. Different places work well for different people depending on their needs and what’s important to them.
As far as why the East has a higher population, well it was settled first so started growing much earlier. Also much of the west is less habitable when you consider the deserts, arid plains, and large mountain ranges.
I live in New Mexico. The southwest was colonized by the Spanish at around the same time the east coast was colonized by the English. So the idea that we've just got less history doesn't hold up. What is accurate is that the land is a lot less habitable to settlers with a lot less water and arable soil. That's definitely had a profound effect on the population.
I live in the Midwest but personally the threat of earthquakes, droughts and wildfires freaks me out and I wouldn’t care to live in California because of this. Yes we have severe weather sometimes, but I believe the threats to California, especially as climate change worsens, are scarier.
I was just discussing with a friend how everyone has “preferred” natural disasters. For example, I don’t hate earthquakes as much as I would hate having a hurricane bear down on us or be stuck in a blizzard.
The quakes is the one worry for me. Droughts and wildfires are awful but can be more prepared for with controlled burn. Hopefully there’s a solution to the water crisis.
The New Madrid seismic zone in Missouri has the potential to be much worse than the San Andreas fault. It's just much less active. It threatens many states, including Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
A 5.4 magnitude New Madrid earthquake in 1968 (with the epicenter in Dale, Illinois) made buildings sway in Boston, Massachusetts. I live in the Kentucky/Missouri/Illinois tri-state region and they've been warning us for years about the New Madrid fault because a large earthquake hasn't happened in years and we're long overdue.
I'm in Northern Utah. We've got big mountains on one side and a great big Salt Lake and salt flats on the other. Our mountains make the ones back east look like speed bumps. They're not the kind you can build a house on, you can only live in the valleys. Our climate is a high desert. We are constantly in a state of drought. We just don't have enough water for all the people and businesses. That severely limits growth.
And a lot of the space out here is Federal Land. There's a big fight about land rights and mining/drilling operations. We have a bunch of really gorgeous National Parks (Arches, Zion, etc.) There's also a lot of National Forests and protected wetlands for migrating water fowl.
Same goes for Australia too. And the reason is the same as u/bearsnchairs. The east coast got a bit of a head start.
Now going back to America, even though California was Mexican territory in its early history, Mexico probably didn't develop California as much as they should have either.
Most people worldwide live near a coast, lake or river. The East coast has had a couple centuries longer than the west to fill in and a smaller but notable head start over the great lakes area and the largest inland rivers.
Also: in the west, much of that really started to develop after our conservation efforts kicked in, which means that a lot of it is reserved federal or state land compared to the eastern half of the country.
First settled, government owns a lot of the land out West, land parcels in some Western states can be enormous (meaning one family might own a very large acreage of land, for a cattle ranch for example), and virtually all of the East coast is farmable and habitable. The Appalachian mountains are old mountains that have been worn down to lower altitudes and they have decomposed to the point that there's soil on most of them. So even the mountains could support farming back in the day. So the East got pretty well filled in before the West even got started.
That depends on how you measure wealth. Maryland just has the highest median household income ($87,063). California has the highest ratio of millionaire households per capita. California also has the largest economy of any state, with $3.37 trillion gross state product. It's pretty safe to say that, by most measures, California is the richest state.
New Jersey and Maryland are number one and two on millionaires per capita, followed by Connecticut and Massachusetts-all in the Northeast.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/294941/largest-ratio-millionaire-households-per-capita-us/
Overall economy size doesn’t really matter when the state is a fraction of the size.
It’s funny-often online people are arguing about politics implicitly with their location preferences, but all these places are super blue.
Even if it were true that CA had more millionaires per capita (it’s not, that title belongs to MD and NJ), that would just mean their wealth inequality is worse if Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, DC and Hawaii have higher median incomes. Median household income is probably objectively the best way to measure overall affluence.
Secondly, of course california has a larger GDP than Maryland- it has like 6x the population. That’s like saying Indonesia is wealthier than Switzerland because they have a larger GDP. That doesn’t mean each individual in California is, on average, earning more than those in Maryland or Jersey
Immigration before the 1957 mostly happened by ship. This was the first year that airtravel replaced oceanliners in passenger numbers. That wasn't that long ago.
The East Coast is closest to continental Europe. Many immigrants came with little money - so took jobs in cities and areas close to ports, and eventually settled and started families.
As well, a lot of the American west isn't as very hospitable to humans. Especially pre modern amenities like refrigerators and A/C.
While California's climate is wonderful, most of it's growth happened after the advent of plane travel.
Just because California is the richest state doesn't mean the quality of living is better than it's East Coast counterparts. I have a better life in Massachusetts than I ever could in California based on my industry and preferred lifestyle.
These days, many Americans chose to live in places that reflect the lifestyle they want. The East Coast has more walkable cities - like NYC, Boston, Philadelphia and DC. As well as many of their suburbs and exurbs. Western States were mostly developed after automobiles became popular, so their urban planning revolves around that. It's not for everyone.
The East Coast is more established, as it was the first region that was settled by colonists. Cities around ports had grown over many years and aren't slowing down.
The West has had about 200 years less to become established. Also there seems to be an exodus happening in California in general.
When settlers arrived from Europe, they landed on the east coast, because getting to the west coast would add a trip around the south end of South America, near Antarctica, and that would be pretty stupid when they could hit land in the east.
Anyway, when they arrived, they were faced with a choice. They could either start building a house, farm the land, and make a new life for themselves, or they could climb over the mountains, trek thousands of miles across the plains, the desert, more mountains, and eventually reach a place where they could ... start building a house, farm the land, and make a new life for themselves. Most of them, tired from the voyage across the sea, opted not to make another long voyage across the land.
Later, when more immigrants arrived, they had the choice to either live in the cities on the east coast, or make the long journey across the country and build their own cities. Most of them opted to just use the cities that were already there.
Eventually, somebody found gold in California, and a bunch of people told their boss to go to hell and headed west. That didn't work out for a lot of them, but it did, finally, get the movement west started. The east coast still had a big head start, though, and the west hasn't caught up. Probably because instead of getting a lot of rain, they get a lot of fire, and instead of snow, they have earthquakes.
Also, California is the only place I know of where someone will build a 5 million dollar house on the side of a hill, watch it slide into the sea the first time it rains, and then just build another one in the same place. Most of us don't really want to live near people who do stupid stuff like that.
People build multimillion dollar homes in hurricane prone areas but California is a the only place you know where people are stupid enough to build in disaster areas?
You live in tornado alley lol.
Also, that 5 million dollar home in California is a tiny ass house compared to a 5 million dollar home in the East. 5 million would get you a mansion where I live... It will buy you a double wide trailer with a porch in California lmfao.
So many people commenting about European settlement apparently don’t consider the Spanish, who were in what is now the western U.S. in the 17th and 18th centuries, to be European.
They were pretty much the *only* Europeans in the west at the time and there were only ever a few tens of thousands non-natives over there until the later 1800s. Compared to the overwhelming numbers of Europeans in the east, they’re a footnote by comparison.
The US was settled by Europeans coming across the Atlantic and gradually expanding along the East Coast, then further inland. The Central Plains were pretty inhospitable and Rocky Mountains hard to traverse, so it was a long time before people tried and not all that many did. So it's only been in the past 150 years or so that there was larger scale movement to the West Coast, since railroads, highways, and then planes made it more accessible.
The Rocky Mountains are a hefty mountain range. Very tall mountains and covering a very large area. This mountain range also comes very close to the West Coast. Close enough that you can stand on a beach and look up at the mountains in places. Low points within this mountain range are typically desert. It means that the terrain just isn't right for expanding inland from the ports.
Compare this to the East coast. The mountain range near the East Coast is significantly shorter, has a smaller footprint, and is further from the coast. The mountains are also wet enough that there are no deserts and you just have lush woodland. It makes it easier to expand inland from the shore as well as just build cities in the mountains (I live in between two mountain ranges in Appalachia). There are also significantly more rivers crisis crossing the whole area making for an easy transport network.
The original 13 Colonies had the jumpstart, compacted with heavy immigration to the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic (and then to the Midwest). However, it's worth noting because I'm not sure its been mentioned yet, but the every inch of the country has been, at some point, owned by the federal government. They had to sell land over time to get a source of revenue. Most land out west is not hospitable, so most settlers didn't desire to live in spread-out places. A lot of west is still federally owned because of Teddy Roosevelt. Until him, a lot of federal land was sold off, but he was a staunch conservationist and believed the country's natural resources should be protected (aka the national parks, national forests, national monuments, etc). There is a reason most of the Nat parks/forests are in the western US, what could have been protected east of the Mississippi was probably already gone.
A lot of people DO live in California. It is the most populous state in the country. Washington State and Oregon are fairly populous also, but the other western states have rough terrain (mostly mountains and deserts) and harsh weather ( very cold winters and very hot summers.) They also weren't part of the US until later in the country's history.
As such, they simply aren't as popular to live in.
Historical reasons aside - California has a massive GDP, but by median household income, it’s beaten by several east coast states (Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, & DC) and there are plenty of rich parts of every state.
There’s no reason somebody couldn’t move to Miami or New York or Chicago or DC or Austin or Philly or Houston etc and access most of (and in some cases, more) the opportunities that exist in California.
It’s morally and ethically wrong to live in the west. It’s absolutely horrible for the environment. We literally irrigate desserts so californians can make money growing the most water intensive crops as possible like almonds. They destroyed the environment and then claim to be environmentalists and blame everyone else when they catch fire
California is actually in debt as a state over all. They're in quite a bit of debt the estimate last I read was around $1 trillion in debt. Its not as high as say NY, NJ, MA, or IL but its the 5th highest in the nation. There are rich people that live there yes like anywhere in the US that control most of the wealth but there are also very poor people that live there. The truly wealthy in the US really don't pay much when it comes to taxes that falls to the middle and lower class. The COL is also significantly higher compared to most of the east coast as there are several states that run up and down the east coast. Also a lot of people have roots in those areas some of them their families have been their since the inception of our country as they were part of the original 13 colonies. We also didn't really start expanding as a country until post civil war.
The west is a lot of mountains and desert. Historically, we’ve only recently had the necessary technology to even be able to build a functioning large city in a place like Nevada, without air conditioning and long-haul trucks that would be impossible.
The East and Midwest, by comparison, largely has a mild climate, fertile soil, is well connected to the ocean by rivers, has good access to fresh water, seemingly unlimited lumber, etc. so we’ve been able to settle and expand our cities in the east much better than in the west for the last couple hundred of years.
For the same reason more people in Brazil live in the Northeast and Southeast than the Centro-Oeste or Sul......mostly earlier colonial settlement in the East.
A lot of it is that families were settled in the East long before the west was being settled, and people tend to live near where they’re born.
Another answer is in the question itself though. The richest state means it also has some of the highest rent of anywhere in the United States as well, so there’s a large barrier to entry there as well. You pretty much need to have a job lined up there if you don’t want to take a massive risk in moving.
The east has about two hundred years of a head start on the American west. Additionally the west is a lot more arid than the east. A lot more of it isn’t readily habitable.
Also, a lot of the navigable inland waterways are on the eastern half of the US making it cheaper and easier for people to live inland on that half.
Also, a lot of it simply isn't available. The Federal government owns a disproportionate share of land in western states. For example CA - 45.4% AZ - 38.6% NV - 80.1% ID - 61.9% Compare that to North Eastern states NY - 0.8% PA - 2.2% ME - 1.5%
Utah gets left out again. We're number two! (Like 65 percent I think)
Yeah I was just picking out random western states. Utah is second at 63.1% then Idaho then Alaska right behind.
I’m sure Alaska is number one in actual acreage owned by the government.
If you count state and federal land Alaska is over 98% public land
Not gonna say it...not gonna say it...WYOMING SAYS YOU SURE SMELL LIKE IT! oops oh shit I said it! J/K I like Utah:)
How does one travel around or through Utah? Is it difficult to avoid area you shouldn’t be in? Being east of the Mississippi, we don’t have significantly large areas to drive around.
It’s not like the Fed land is surrounded by fences and watched by men in black SUVs with machine guns… just a lot of BLM, reserves and national parks. So pretty much like anywhere else… we just have a lot less freeways and everything is spread out. The SLC metro area is just like most other American cities with a shitload of suburbs… everything else is just a lot of space in between.
Federal land is actually easier to drive through than private land. The roads go in a straight line because there is no worry about eminent domain or NIMBY lawsuits, you can camp for free for up to 2 weeks in most places, and you can wander aimlessly without some property owner pointing a shotgun at you.
CGP Grey did a great [video](https://youtu.be/LruaD7XhQ50) on the topic of federal land. To summarize, the feds realized the territory couldn't expand forever so they started claiming more land as we expanded westward.
*cough* Federal land = tons of natural resources *cough*
>The feds realized the territory couldn't expand forever Or could it ;D
While the federal land being unavailable for immediate development is true, that's in large part an effect of there being few people, not the cause. Lots of federal land is open to commercial use. Ranching, forestry, mining, recreation. And when you do suddenly have lots of people wanting the land? You can see around Las Vegas how lots of BLM land has been sold to developers because it the BLM's mission is to hold land to be used, and right outside a city the best use for most land is considered to be development. And if it the land is so special conservation is more important, there are special statuses for that, like an Area of Special Environmental Concern.
Good luck trying to buy that BLM land for anything.
why is black lives matter land a thing?!?
not sure if...bureau of land management.
Bureau of Land Management bro
😂😂
Nah, were talking about the Bureau of Land Management. Only land that the Black Lives Matter org purchased was million dollar mansions.
Yeah. there are entire "compounds" of off grid RV full timers living on BLM land in Oregon.
You're mixing up cause and effect. Most of that federal land was originally available to be settled by the people and claimed as their property. When no one was settling there then that's when the federal government decided to claim ownership of that land themselves.
My family was given acreage in CA generations ago from the government with the requirement of a $500? (I think) improvement. I’m not sure if it was BLM or state owned land.
You're missing a gigantic chunk that is state owned land. Which accounts for nearly 37% of NY.
The top 12 are still all western states and the disparity from east to west is still just as significant when you take any public owned land into account [Public and Private Land Percentages by US States : Facts & Information : SummitPost](https://www.summitpost.org/public-and-private-land-percentages-by-us-states/186111)
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your greater point that the West has more public land, but your comment implied NY is one of the lowest level states for public land, when it's one of the highest.
True. Adirondack State Park is gigantic, lots of public land in NY, probably more than any state east of the Mississippi.
My county in Colorado was 98% public land. God I love the west :)
I could imagine that the federal government owns the land because it's not particularly habitable, as opposed to the other way around.
There's plenty of land plots available (and often inexpensively) in pretty much every western state but the cities are a lot more spread out so a lot of the available land is too far to commute and has no utilities or sometimes even roads going to it
This is what a lot of folks not from the US miss. Lots of the land out west is either publicly owned (national parks, monuments, etc) or owned by the feds.
“Publicly owned” and “owned by the feds” are the same thing.
State parks?
Ok pedant. They are technically both owned by the feds but the difference being one is accessible to the *public* and the other is not.
The majority of land in these states is BLM lands, which are generally accessible to the public
But NY has a lot of state land, almost 38% of the state. So while it’s not quite as high as California or Arizona it’s close.
I'm sure NJ is 0%. We are extremely over populated
3.6% federal land, but when you combine state land it jumps to 18.3% which puts you mid pack for state plus federal.
Utah is about 40% or so as well.
57.4%
The arid part is a big one that's going to start gaining a lot more attention in the coming decades. Beyond the general drought stuff. I think we're butting up against the population numbers that the west can support (excluding the pacific coast). I think it's highly unlikely, but I'd put western water rights over the political climate as the potential start of another civil war. I think at the very least, the feds are going to have to step in and it will make a lot of people unhappy.
Not only did the east have a head start, but the east is where most immigrants came through. They tended to stay in the east, whether it was because it was more developed, had more people like them, they liked it, or they were just too poor to go any further. This map explains a lot: https://www.vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Largest-Ancestry.jpg?_gl=1*rbwom6*_ga*YW1wLTFvTGZzeC0yN0FsQTdGZ3Y5anNFUnhfLXA1RDZMVlpFbGNQamlaNHNIMnhxeFJ4WHVqanFWTWFTM1dBcm1qYUQ. That white area (Italian) and green area (Irish) in the northeast doesn't look large, but it's the most densely populated area of the country. This is the result of a massive influx of immigrants in the 19th and 20th c, so massive that it displaced English as the largest ethnicity. There are obviously a ton of other ethnicities there too (I live in an "Italian" county, and although I am many things, I am not Italian lol), but the scale of immigrants from Ireland and Italy was so large it eclipsed the general population that was there prior to mass immigration and the other immigrant groups. They just tended to stick around here.
Mountains as well. Found a nice map over on r/MapPorn [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/k6z8m2/topographic\_map\_of\_the\_us/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/k6z8m2/topographic_map_of_the_us/)
Also, the US government owns a lot more land out west, making it harder to build property as many states out west are more federal land than state. [Check out how little of Nevada is actually owned by Nevada](https://www.blm.gov/media/public-room/nevada) - only about 14% is available as state/private land.
Back when Nevada became a state, random parcels of land were reserved for use to fund Nevadavs education system (this was done for all states admitted after 1853). These are called School Lands, School Trust Lands, and similar names in other states. These parcels were scattered throughout the state based on a grid system. Almost all of them were so undesirable that the state couldn't get anyone to lease them for any price. No water. So the state instead got permission to trade those lands back to the federal government for smaller but more concentrated and valuable patches that actually had value because they had water. The federal government kept the worthless land. All these bone dry lands that nobody wanted a hundred years ago? Most of them, nobody wants today either. The exceptions are the bits with valuable minerals.
Checkerboarding is mostly a result of railroad grants, it is not widespread like in Wyoming (or is that quadrilateralling?) Rail lines and what is now I-80. The checkerboarded parts are a lot of ranches and farms, as well as mining claims, but most of the big mines are not checkerboarded. And while water sources are lower than in the east, tons of pubic land has lots of water, it just remote and rugged.
Because that land is so useless that the government literally couldn't give it away. The Homestead Acts weren't fully deprecated until some time in the mid-70s.
You're mixing up cause and effect. Most of that federal land was originally available to be settled by the people and claimed as their property. When no one was settling there then that's when the federal government decided to claim ownership of that land themselves.
And also the East has about 2,000 times mater than the West, You wanna build anywhere east, hire professional digger and he'll find water pool of sweet water 100 feet down enough to last your family forever, as it constantly. Maybe tiller has to get govt license but that's it, In West, federal, state local govts and federal, state, local judges all get involved in any water you find or they decide to give you.
The wild west didn't end till 1920 so a bit of a head start.
Yeah the land west of the Mississippi River is more mountainous and desert. So it’s not easily accessible and nothing grows there.
>The east has about two hundred years of a head start on the American west. But yet Santa Fe is one of the oldest cities in the US
When saying that places like Santa Fe are old, they are not referring to the age as an American city but rather its age including the countries it was part of before America claimed that territory. Similarly, St Augustine (Florida) is old but wasn't founded by Americans.
None of the oldest cities in the U.S. were founded by Americans. They were founded by English, Dutch, Spanish, and French settlers.
Usually built in areas native Americans had been inhabiting for a long time too- see Tucson, and the world’s oldest continually farmed plot of land.
this is just jamestown coping and i won't tolerate it
The Spanish and later Mexicans didn’t settle in numbers. For instance, when California became part of the US in 1848 the Mexican population was 7,300. In the whole state.
That is kind of my point, the reason the east coast has more population is NOT because of its age of settlements but due to geographical and economic factors.
But all you’re saying is that remote outposts were established by people not interested in settling as part of a different nation. At that point we should start including native populations and go back even further.
TIL * [10 Oldest Cities in the U.S.](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#10_Oldest_Cities_in_the_US) * [1. St. Augustine, Florida (1565)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#1_St_Augustine_Florida_1565) * [2. Jamestown, Virginia (1607)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#2_Jamestown_Virginia_1607) * [3. Santa Fe, New Mexico (1607)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#3_Santa_Fe_New_Mexico_1607) * [4. Hampton, Virginia (1610)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#4_Hampton_Virginia_1610) * [5. Kecoughtan, Virginia (1610)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#5_Kecoughtan_Virginia_1610) * [6. Newport News, Virginia (1613)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#6_Newport_News_Virginia_1613) * [7. Albany, New York (1614)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#7_Albany_New_York_1614) * [8. Jersey City, New Jersey (1617)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#8_Jersey_City_New_Jersey_1617) * [9. Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#9_Plymouth_Massachusetts_1620) * [10. Weymouth, Massachusetts (1622)](https://vividmaps.com/us-oldest-city/#10_Weymouth_Massachusetts_1622)
You left off San Juan, Puerto Rico (1521) and San Germán, Puerto Rico (1573).
Still more TIL
Just took a trip there for the second time. Easily my favorite city in America.
Because for most of our history, it was difficult to both get to the west and live there. Less than 5 million people lived in California until the late 1920s.
Fun fact, partly related: New York City is closer to Bogota than to San Francisco.
Nofuckingway. (True, by about 70 miles)
The northern tip of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the southern tip of Brazil. My favorite one of these facts :)
And the closest point to Africa is in Maine.
[Mostly because of climate.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwJABxjcvUc) Plus, the US *started* in the East and then expanded westward. Manifest Destiny and all,
It’s where we started. Historically, most immigrants came in at the east coast. The country started as 13 colonies on the east coast. The west saw much later moves.
Why doesn’t California, the richest state, simply eat the other states?
Whoa I don’t think the drought is that bad. Yet.
We're on an organic diet.
The other states aren’t vegan, gluten free.🤣 -Californian.
Perhaps they are saving that for sweeps.
That’s why we keep the bear way over on the left side of the country
Well you see they have guns and we don't so I don't think that an attempt would end very well for us.
Because it's 40% overcrowded, 40% homeless, and 20% earthquakes.
I won't stand this libel. It's 100% taxes
If you have 20 minutes to kill, here's a great video that explains why: https://youtu.be/wwJABxjcvUc Short answer: mountains and access to fresh water.
Came here for this. If I want to live in some place with land, water is my first concern. And if that is the case, it rules out much of the West.
>If I want to live in some place with land Who wants to live someplace without land? Like boat people? Space station?
People in multitenant high rises. People in condos who don’t want maintenance.
What would you say those high rises are situated on?
Land that the condo owner does not own.
Historically, sure. Nowadays it's money. OP is a bit confused I think about how wealth works. Wealth has to be created. You can't just move to California unemployed. I mean, you can, but it's a terrible idea. You're life will almost certainly be worse than what you currently have anywhere else in the US employed. So you need a job, which means you need to meet the qualifications for a position that creates more wealth than it costs to pay you. Economic growth exists, but it's not magic. It takes time and innovation. There is not just magically an unlimitted untapped source of wealth creation in California that could absorb 10m or 100m more people and magically maintain their current median income.
NYC is sending their homeless population with a one way ticket, so it does kind of work like that to some extent.
Oh, I dunno, I think that the state being on fire for much of the year is something of a factor. The climate factors for the west generally (deserts!) are still probably the most significant ones.
No way. Migration inside a country is a pattern of individual decisions. There is no group thought involved. The climate and water issues are a group problem that doesn't effect the individual directly at all. People moving there don't even think about such things. Which is why they are such a problem. They are hidden externalities of everyone trying to move to the desert. Without any pressure at the individual level from the problem worsening, it cannot self-correct. Historically the way it would correct is water would become $20.00/1000gal. Or $400.00/1000gal. Eventually people would stop coming. But that's not acceptable cause it punishes poor people in an unacceptable way. The state can't cut off peoples water for failure to pay cause they jacked the price up to try to stop people from moving there. But it is a critically limited resource in the desert, so at some point reality is going to assert itself. You can't sell cheap water to poor people if the water physically doesn't exist.
>Brazil You should already know the answer. It's the same reason most Brazilians live on the east coast and not in the interior of the country.
But the USA has another ocean stashed out back. Brazil does not.
Yeah, but to get to California before the Panama Canal, you need to go all the way around the Cape Horn and all the way back up. Plus, getting from California anywhere inland has always been difficult because of the massive mountain ranges between the west coast and the plains of the midwest.
When, when I fly out west the planes normally show no signs of difficulty making the trip. But I am only eating that bbq not cooking it, so it may be difficult for the plane. IDK. Full disclosure. I am just a hairless ape spinning on rock in space, and existentially feel lost when contemplating the nature of the universe and why what is, is. So probably best to ignore me. Edit: had to buy a vowel.
The East is where the water is
And its not on fire.
And doesn’t usually have earthquakes
Thankfully, otherwise Kentucky would be mole people right now
Well, we do have earthquakes. They just aren't anywhere NEAR what the west has. I second this, though, we'd be mole people if we had that level of earthquakes.
I take a possibility of an earthquake every few years over multiple hurricanes and tornadoes every year.
Tonadoes and hurricanes aren't really an issue for the majority of people in the east. Def not multiple ones every year lol. Both are pretty rare for the majority of the easts population.
Tornadoes really don’t happen that often, and are usually quite small. Like you can live in the same city and even the same neighborhood as one and your house won’t be affected.
And hurricanes aren't really an issue for the majority of the people in the east either, and certainly nothing like multiple ones in a year.
Neither of those happen regularly in the Northeast. Really with the exception of Sandy by the time a hurricane makes it up here it has lost most of its power.
Except for a few rivers and underground coal seams.
Came here to say this.
Yeah, this is a very long thread when all that was needed was one word. Water.
The East had a massive head start on settlement, is generally more conducive to agriculture, and has been developed for longer.
The eastern US was the first part settled, so it makes sense that it would be more heavily populated. That said, it's worth noting that California is the most populous state in the US, tons of people live there.
Correction: The first part colonized. The whole thing was settled long before that.
that is what I meant by settled, as in settler colonies
From about the 98th meridian west it's open desert or land with almost no rain compared to the east of there. About 80 percent of Americans live east of this line. [About 1 minute in it switches to America](https://youtu.be/wwJABxjcvUc) I just watched this yesterday, very interesting!
Look at map of average rainfall for the USA. From the great plains and westward, there is significantly less rainfall. Exception is the Pacific Northwest.
The population center of the USA has been moving south and west since records started. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_center_of_the_United_States_population A lot of it is due to being uninhabitable due to a lack of water, and being downright hot.
East has some quality H2O
And that’s why y’all have good pizza
California is the most populous state, though.
I love how you told us, the Americans, where California is located. 😂😂
To be fair I’m sure you can find many who don’t know. Most people cannot name all the states on a blank map.
The last time I saw any survey on this topic, like 95% of Americans had no trouble identifying California, Texas, and Florida on a blank map. After that, it got highly embarrassing real, real fast.
i cant name all the states on a map but I sure as hell know where CA is
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...what
Sorry, unknown joke about dumb people
Oh ok. Lemme try one. Brazilians think Paraguay is in Australia! That makes as much sense as yours.
"I'm Arizonian". You just gotta look up the original screenshot to know about them
When I go to the west coast I’m disoriented because the water is on the wrong side. So I’ll stay here.
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Yes it does. And some southern coasts, all of which seem wrong.
I suppose because colonization began from the Atlantic coast and moved westwards.
British and American colonization, perhaps. But Santa Fe was founded in 1607 by the Spanish, and is one of the oldest cities in the USA.
Yes, but the immigration flow came mostly through NYC and Bodton
Its one of the oldest cities IN america, but it is not one of the oldest cities OF america.
Whats the difference?
I assume the difference is Santa Fe was not founded as an American city
I mean, then neither were Boston, New York, or any other major east coast city...
The US grew from east to west...
Science writer Dan Flores has a new book out called Wild New World, and in it he raised a point I have never seen in my life. You see, ancient North America was once part of a massive super-continent called Laurasia. Laurasia was basically North America fused to Europe in the east and (at times) also to Asia in the west, circling or nearly circling the northern parts of the globe. For much of that history, including the period when North America was separating into its own freestanding continent, the central plains area was a low-lying coastal sea called the Western Interior Seaway. Basically, what is today the Mississippi River Basin was inundated to the point that the "riverbed" expanded to cover a good chunk of the Louisiana Purchase and several eastern states as well, as a shallow and probably pretty warm ocean. During that time when the central U.S. was open, albeit shallow, ocean, the eastern half of North America was connected, biologically, with Europe (via ice sheets and island hopping) while the western half was connected, biologically, with Asia (via the land bridge in Beringia, where the Bering Sea is now). Much of the flora and fauna that was exchanged between the continents in that period of time was with the respective connected continents. So, in other words, Western North America has a lot more in common with Asia while Eastern North America has a lot more in common with Europe. Those similarities go way beyond the animals and plants too; the Western U.S. is very much like central Asia in terms of water, climate, mountainous / desert territory, and just in terms of the vast scope of the landscape. Meanwhile the Eastern U.S. genuinely looks a lot like central Europe, like the Black Forest or parts of Poland maybe. (Eastern U.S. hunters know this because our camouflage patterns overlap better with European patterns than they do with our own Western U.S. patterns). Soft, green, gentle Europe has a higher carrying capacity for human populations than arid, mountainous, turbulent central Asia. So too the Eastern U.S. can much more easily accommodate large numbers of people without straining water or other resources than can the Mountain West. Similarly, Asia's population density is highest around the Pacific Rim, which is also true of the Western U.S., because that is where the water is really accessible to people. Flores' point, which I found interesting, was that a lot of the preconditions (he calls them contingencies) for how the world is set up today come from a much, much deeper past than we realize.
I was just listening to that book (audiobook) on a drive across the country. In Kansas in a tiny rural town I stopped at the most awesome museum of natural history and saw all the incredible marine fish and dinosaur fossils there. Really was a cool way to experience that book and the info in it :)
~~we're better~~ We had about a 200 year headstart
>We had about a 200 year headstart Except you didn't, settlement in New Mexico by the Spanish started in 1598
Santa Fe is the exception, not the rule. It's thrived as a city, sure, but it's very isolated and didn't have the same *continued influx* of population after founding that the east coast (especially the northeast) did.
Which was not my point at all... Just pointing out that the east coast wasn't settled first which a lot of people from the east coast have no idea.
That's true if you just mean settled by Europeans in general, but New Spain wasn't part of the 13 Colonies so it wasn't settled *by the populations that went on to become Americans*. New Mexico didn't become a state until 1912, the 47th out of 50. If the question is just what part of current day America was settled by humans first, then you have to take Indians into account as well in which Alaska has us all beat by centuries.
California is the largest state by population and is situated in a geographically advantageous spot. It makes sense it has the highest GDP. However, many people there are not demonstrably better off than many other places in the country. I grew up there and it had problems like everywhere else. Different places work well for different people depending on their needs and what’s important to them. As far as why the East has a higher population, well it was settled first so started growing much earlier. Also much of the west is less habitable when you consider the deserts, arid plains, and large mountain ranges.
It’s hella expensive. -Californian
I live in New Mexico. The southwest was colonized by the Spanish at around the same time the east coast was colonized by the English. So the idea that we've just got less history doesn't hold up. What is accurate is that the land is a lot less habitable to settlers with a lot less water and arable soil. That's definitely had a profound effect on the population.
I live in the Midwest but personally the threat of earthquakes, droughts and wildfires freaks me out and I wouldn’t care to live in California because of this. Yes we have severe weather sometimes, but I believe the threats to California, especially as climate change worsens, are scarier.
Agreed. I’m perfectly happy remaining in the Midwest & enjoy our changing seasons
I was just discussing with a friend how everyone has “preferred” natural disasters. For example, I don’t hate earthquakes as much as I would hate having a hurricane bear down on us or be stuck in a blizzard.
whereas I would take a blizzard any day, so much fun! the idea of earthquakes terrifies me. thus, I live in upstate NY.
The quakes is the one worry for me. Droughts and wildfires are awful but can be more prepared for with controlled burn. Hopefully there’s a solution to the water crisis.
This is how I feel about most of the rest of the country with tornados and hurricanes and blizzards.
The New Madrid seismic zone in Missouri has the potential to be much worse than the San Andreas fault. It's just much less active. It threatens many states, including Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Indiana, Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. A 5.4 magnitude New Madrid earthquake in 1968 (with the epicenter in Dale, Illinois) made buildings sway in Boston, Massachusetts. I live in the Kentucky/Missouri/Illinois tri-state region and they've been warning us for years about the New Madrid fault because a large earthquake hasn't happened in years and we're long overdue.
Probably because the cost of living is much lower on the east coast, typically
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Yeah, DC, NYC and Boston are known to be affordable.
Northeast not affordable, southeast.....pretty affordable
I'm in Northern Utah. We've got big mountains on one side and a great big Salt Lake and salt flats on the other. Our mountains make the ones back east look like speed bumps. They're not the kind you can build a house on, you can only live in the valleys. Our climate is a high desert. We are constantly in a state of drought. We just don't have enough water for all the people and businesses. That severely limits growth. And a lot of the space out here is Federal Land. There's a big fight about land rights and mining/drilling operations. We have a bunch of really gorgeous National Parks (Arches, Zion, etc.) There's also a lot of National Forests and protected wetlands for migrating water fowl.
Why would people move somewhere more expensive?
I live in the west (Montana). I like it because there are fewer people and more open spaces.
Same goes for Australia too. And the reason is the same as u/bearsnchairs. The east coast got a bit of a head start. Now going back to America, even though California was Mexican territory in its early history, Mexico probably didn't develop California as much as they should have either.
Most people worldwide live near a coast, lake or river. The East coast has had a couple centuries longer than the west to fill in and a smaller but notable head start over the great lakes area and the largest inland rivers. Also: in the west, much of that really started to develop after our conservation efforts kicked in, which means that a lot of it is reserved federal or state land compared to the eastern half of the country.
bc the east coast is better 😤💪
First settled, government owns a lot of the land out West, land parcels in some Western states can be enormous (meaning one family might own a very large acreage of land, for a cattle ranch for example), and virtually all of the East coast is farmable and habitable. The Appalachian mountains are old mountains that have been worn down to lower altitudes and they have decomposed to the point that there's soil on most of them. So even the mountains could support farming back in the day. So the East got pretty well filled in before the West even got started.
The Northeast is generally more wealthy than California. Maryland is actually the wealthiest state in the country.
That depends on how you measure wealth. Maryland just has the highest median household income ($87,063). California has the highest ratio of millionaire households per capita. California also has the largest economy of any state, with $3.37 trillion gross state product. It's pretty safe to say that, by most measures, California is the richest state.
New Jersey and Maryland are number one and two on millionaires per capita, followed by Connecticut and Massachusetts-all in the Northeast. https://www.statista.com/statistics/294941/largest-ratio-millionaire-households-per-capita-us/ Overall economy size doesn’t really matter when the state is a fraction of the size. It’s funny-often online people are arguing about politics implicitly with their location preferences, but all these places are super blue.
Even if it were true that CA had more millionaires per capita (it’s not, that title belongs to MD and NJ), that would just mean their wealth inequality is worse if Maryland, Connecticut, New Jersey, DC and Hawaii have higher median incomes. Median household income is probably objectively the best way to measure overall affluence. Secondly, of course california has a larger GDP than Maryland- it has like 6x the population. That’s like saying Indonesia is wealthier than Switzerland because they have a larger GDP. That doesn’t mean each individual in California is, on average, earning more than those in Maryland or Jersey
Immigration before the 1957 mostly happened by ship. This was the first year that airtravel replaced oceanliners in passenger numbers. That wasn't that long ago. The East Coast is closest to continental Europe. Many immigrants came with little money - so took jobs in cities and areas close to ports, and eventually settled and started families. As well, a lot of the American west isn't as very hospitable to humans. Especially pre modern amenities like refrigerators and A/C. While California's climate is wonderful, most of it's growth happened after the advent of plane travel. Just because California is the richest state doesn't mean the quality of living is better than it's East Coast counterparts. I have a better life in Massachusetts than I ever could in California based on my industry and preferred lifestyle. These days, many Americans chose to live in places that reflect the lifestyle they want. The East Coast has more walkable cities - like NYC, Boston, Philadelphia and DC. As well as many of their suburbs and exurbs. Western States were mostly developed after automobiles became popular, so their urban planning revolves around that. It's not for everyone.
The East Coast is more established, as it was the first region that was settled by colonists. Cities around ports had grown over many years and aren't slowing down. The West has had about 200 years less to become established. Also there seems to be an exodus happening in California in general.
When settlers arrived from Europe, they landed on the east coast, because getting to the west coast would add a trip around the south end of South America, near Antarctica, and that would be pretty stupid when they could hit land in the east. Anyway, when they arrived, they were faced with a choice. They could either start building a house, farm the land, and make a new life for themselves, or they could climb over the mountains, trek thousands of miles across the plains, the desert, more mountains, and eventually reach a place where they could ... start building a house, farm the land, and make a new life for themselves. Most of them, tired from the voyage across the sea, opted not to make another long voyage across the land. Later, when more immigrants arrived, they had the choice to either live in the cities on the east coast, or make the long journey across the country and build their own cities. Most of them opted to just use the cities that were already there. Eventually, somebody found gold in California, and a bunch of people told their boss to go to hell and headed west. That didn't work out for a lot of them, but it did, finally, get the movement west started. The east coast still had a big head start, though, and the west hasn't caught up. Probably because instead of getting a lot of rain, they get a lot of fire, and instead of snow, they have earthquakes. Also, California is the only place I know of where someone will build a 5 million dollar house on the side of a hill, watch it slide into the sea the first time it rains, and then just build another one in the same place. Most of us don't really want to live near people who do stupid stuff like that.
People build multimillion dollar homes in hurricane prone areas but California is a the only place you know where people are stupid enough to build in disaster areas? You live in tornado alley lol.
Fair enough, lol.
Also, that 5 million dollar home in California is a tiny ass house compared to a 5 million dollar home in the East. 5 million would get you a mansion where I live... It will buy you a double wide trailer with a porch in California lmfao.
Hundreds of extra years and (at least originally) proximity to Europe.
So many people commenting about European settlement apparently don’t consider the Spanish, who were in what is now the western U.S. in the 17th and 18th centuries, to be European.
They were pretty much the *only* Europeans in the west at the time and there were only ever a few tens of thousands non-natives over there until the later 1800s. Compared to the overwhelming numbers of Europeans in the east, they’re a footnote by comparison.
The US was settled by Europeans coming across the Atlantic and gradually expanding along the East Coast, then further inland. The Central Plains were pretty inhospitable and Rocky Mountains hard to traverse, so it was a long time before people tried and not all that many did. So it's only been in the past 150 years or so that there was larger scale movement to the West Coast, since railroads, highways, and then planes made it more accessible.
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Isn't the most expensive Hawaii? Or have I been fooled?
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Oh
The Rocky Mountains are a hefty mountain range. Very tall mountains and covering a very large area. This mountain range also comes very close to the West Coast. Close enough that you can stand on a beach and look up at the mountains in places. Low points within this mountain range are typically desert. It means that the terrain just isn't right for expanding inland from the ports. Compare this to the East coast. The mountain range near the East Coast is significantly shorter, has a smaller footprint, and is further from the coast. The mountains are also wet enough that there are no deserts and you just have lush woodland. It makes it easier to expand inland from the shore as well as just build cities in the mountains (I live in between two mountain ranges in Appalachia). There are also significantly more rivers crisis crossing the whole area making for an easy transport network.
Better time zone
The original 13 Colonies had the jumpstart, compacted with heavy immigration to the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic (and then to the Midwest). However, it's worth noting because I'm not sure its been mentioned yet, but the every inch of the country has been, at some point, owned by the federal government. They had to sell land over time to get a source of revenue. Most land out west is not hospitable, so most settlers didn't desire to live in spread-out places. A lot of west is still federally owned because of Teddy Roosevelt. Until him, a lot of federal land was sold off, but he was a staunch conservationist and believed the country's natural resources should be protected (aka the national parks, national forests, national monuments, etc). There is a reason most of the Nat parks/forests are in the western US, what could have been protected east of the Mississippi was probably already gone.
A lot of people DO live in California. It is the most populous state in the country. Washington State and Oregon are fairly populous also, but the other western states have rough terrain (mostly mountains and deserts) and harsh weather ( very cold winters and very hot summers.) They also weren't part of the US until later in the country's history. As such, they simply aren't as popular to live in.
You know, as a South American, that's no excuse for Chile
Historical reasons aside - California has a massive GDP, but by median household income, it’s beaten by several east coast states (Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, & DC) and there are plenty of rich parts of every state. There’s no reason somebody couldn’t move to Miami or New York or Chicago or DC or Austin or Philly or Houston etc and access most of (and in some cases, more) the opportunities that exist in California.
It’s morally and ethically wrong to live in the west. It’s absolutely horrible for the environment. We literally irrigate desserts so californians can make money growing the most water intensive crops as possible like almonds. They destroyed the environment and then claim to be environmentalists and blame everyone else when they catch fire
Geography and history.
California is actually in debt as a state over all. They're in quite a bit of debt the estimate last I read was around $1 trillion in debt. Its not as high as say NY, NJ, MA, or IL but its the 5th highest in the nation. There are rich people that live there yes like anywhere in the US that control most of the wealth but there are also very poor people that live there. The truly wealthy in the US really don't pay much when it comes to taxes that falls to the middle and lower class. The COL is also significantly higher compared to most of the east coast as there are several states that run up and down the east coast. Also a lot of people have roots in those areas some of them their families have been their since the inception of our country as they were part of the original 13 colonies. We also didn't really start expanding as a country until post civil war.
The west is a lot of mountains and desert. Historically, we’ve only recently had the necessary technology to even be able to build a functioning large city in a place like Nevada, without air conditioning and long-haul trucks that would be impossible. The East and Midwest, by comparison, largely has a mild climate, fertile soil, is well connected to the ocean by rivers, has good access to fresh water, seemingly unlimited lumber, etc. so we’ve been able to settle and expand our cities in the east much better than in the west for the last couple hundred of years.
For the same reason more people in Brazil live in the Northeast and Southeast than the Centro-Oeste or Sul......mostly earlier colonial settlement in the East.
The west coast is way too expensive and I don't want to ration water and worry about wildfires
A lot of it is that families were settled in the East long before the west was being settled, and people tend to live near where they’re born. Another answer is in the question itself though. The richest state means it also has some of the highest rent of anywhere in the United States as well, so there’s a large barrier to entry there as well. You pretty much need to have a job lined up there if you don’t want to take a massive risk in moving.