state capital cities

Tacoma isn't the capital of WA, Olympia is.


"Sarah Banick" wrote in message
news:lNH%c.401856$%_6.224462@attbi_s01...
Why are state capital cities often relatively obscure small cities?
Albany, Sacramento, Tallahassee, Springfield, Lansing come to mind.
Which capitals are also the largest city population wise?

Hi Tim --

I actually posted this in another thread not too long ago. In the 18th and
19th centuries, there was an anti-urban bias in the U.S., due to rapid
industrialization and the arrival of immmigrants, etc. There were far more
rural people in a given state (until about 1960, when urbanization became
prevalent). In the U.S., cities are creatures of the state, established by
the state legislature. As the major of legislaturers were -- and in many
cases still are -- rural, they voted to place their capitols away from the
evil trade-centered cities.

This is especially noticable in eastern cities -- Albany instead of NYC;
Springfield instead of Chicago; Harrisburg instead of Philadelpia;
Annapolis
instead of Baltimore.

Of course there are exceptions (Boston).

Now, as the country began to move west, the trend appears to continue
(Jefferson City, Missouri, anyone?) In some cases there was no big city,
but
the capital city grew into it (Denver, Phoenix). In other cases, the
capital
city floundered or, more likely, was outgrown by rival cities (Carson
City,
Sacramento, Salem, Tacoma, Austin) because of economic, social, and
political realities.

There was never an established pattern for capital cities. They've mostly
evolved as their states' economic activities evolved. By the way, land
grant
state colleges were also founded in "rural cities."

Atlanta, where I live, was not Georgia's original capital. It was
Savannah,
a couple other places, and then, Milledgeville until 1864. During
Reconstruction there was a battle in the legislature as to whether return
it
to Milledgeville (we all know where that is, right?), or move it to the
evil
city where the horrors of Reconstruction were taking place. The evil
traders
won. :-)

Sarah (glad to have something to show for an MS in Urban Studies)

"Tim923" wrote in message
...
You call Sacramento an obscure small city? Have you been there lately?
Or
have you ever been there?

OK, it's larger than I thought, but still small compared to LA.

98% of the cities in the world is small compared to LA.

In article ,
Hatunen wrote:

On Wed, 08 Sep 2004 20:03:52 GMT, Bill Pittman
wrote:

Illinois is eastern??

Anything east of the Rockies is Eastern.

when I lived in Empria kansas people used to give ma an odd look
whan I used phrases like "back East here"

Hmmm. (I assume you meant Emporia.)

Well, I grew up in Missouri so I wouldn't have used that frame of
reference. But then, to MU graduates anyone from KS is just a "damn
Jayhawk".

--
Bill Pittman; change for e-mail as indicated

The top metropolitan areas in NYS:
http://www.census.gov/population/cen...c-t3/tab03.txt

NYC 22M (less if NJ/CT/PA part removed)
Buffalo 1.2M
Rochester 1.1M
Albany 880K
Syracuse 730K

I think the strict city population list ranks Albany even lower.

127.0.0.1 filted:

On 8 Sep 2004 07:23:16 -0700, R H Draney wrote:

Okay, not Hartford then...most of the capitals were in the top five in their
respective states, but there was one that was way the heck-and-gone down the
list, and it was in an eastern state that I wouldn't have been able to come up
with five cities without an almanac in front of me...if someone else (Mark
Brader?) wants to crunch the numbers again, be my guest....r

montpellier VT is the smallest capitol city in the US

You're not following me...we already *know* Montpelier's the smallest state
capital...a quick check shows that it's the 13th largest city in Vermont, which
is quite a way down the list...but I know I had one that was outsized by more
places *in its state* than that....r

Hatunen filted:

Finally in 1854 the legislature set the capital at Sacramento. At
the time, Los Angeles was a sleepy little pueblo.

************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

They'll put capitals in some of the wackiest places...like where Arizona's
territorial capital was from 1867-77, until they moved it back to--Prescott?...r

On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 17:57:51 GMT, Tim923 wrote:

This is not really a travel question, but it seemed like the best
newsgroup to post this:

Why are state capital cities often relatively obscure small cities?
Albany, Sacramento, Tallahassee, Springfield, Lansing come to mind.
Which capitals are also the largest city population wise?

Phoenix was pretty big, last time I checked.

Em

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents,
and the second half by our children.
--- Clarence Darrow
(make that YOUR children).

R.H. Draney writes:
I did this once years ago, manually, and at that time also figured out
how many states had their *second* largest cities as capitals,
third largest, and so on...I think there was one where the capital
was something like the 22nd largest...

Not quite 22nd, at least not today.

if someone else (Mark Brader?) wants to crunch the numbers again,
be my guest....

Oh, all right. (And "again" is the word, too; I did this once before,
but apparently I didn't keep a copy of the data, and I don't know what
source I used then; I had to go hunting for one this time.)

Anyway, at http://www.census.gov/popest/cities/SUB-EST2003-04.html
the Census Bureau provides recent population estimates for all 19,450
incorporated places in the US. I downloaded the full set of files*
and took the most recent set of estimates (July 1, 2003). Since most
places are named in the file in the style "Chicago city", I stripped
the word "city" and similar designations (but not a capitalized "City",
of course); then I sorted each state's file and cut it off at the line
for the state capital.

* Why don't they also provide the whole list in one file? It's only a
few hundred kilobytes. Oh well.

It turns out that on this basis -- of course, metropolitan areas might
produce quite a different result -- the states most nearly fitting
R.H.'s description are Washington (capital ranks 18th) and Missouri
(16th), followed by Kentucky and Pennsylvania (both 9th) and Florida
(8th). Note incidentally that two of these states are also two of the
four states whose official names use "Commonwealth of" instead of
"State of", i.e. Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

Another way to look at this is to look at the population ratio of the
state's largest city to its capital. This is a measure where states
with large cities will tend to "win", so it's no surprise to see that
New York leads, New York City being more than 86 times the size of Albany.
Pennsylvania comes next, followed by Illinois and Maryland, and then,
again, Washington and Missouri.

Here's all the data, in alphabetical order by state. The parenthesized
numbers are the ratios just mentioned.

Alabama
1. 236,620 Birmingham
2. 200,123 Montgomery (1.182)

Alaska
1. 270,951 Anchorage
2. 31,187 Juneau (8.688)

Arizona
1. 1,388,416 Phoenix

Arkansas
1. 184,053 Little Rock

California
1. 3,819,951 Los Angeles
2. 1,266,753 San Diego
3. 898,349 San Jose
4. 751,682 San Francisco
5. 475,460 Long Beach
6. 451,455 Fresno
7. 445,335 Sacramento (8.578)

Colorado
1. 557,478 Denver

Connecticut
1. 139,664 Bridgeport
2. 124,512 New Haven
3. 124,387 Hartford (1.123)

Delaware
1. 72,051 Wilmington
2. 32,808 Dover (2.196)

Florida
1. 773,781 Jacksonville
2. 376,815 Miami
3. 317,647 Tampa
4. 247,610 St. Petersburg
5. 226,401 Hialeah
6. 199,336 Orlando
7. 162,917 Fort Lauderdale
8. 153,938 Tallahassee (5.027)

Georgia
1. 423,019 Atlanta

Hawaii
1. 380,149 Honolulu

Idaho
1. 190,117 Boise City

Illinois
1. 2,869,121 Chicago
2. 162,184 Aurora
3. 151,725 Rockford
4. 137,894 Naperville
5. 123,570 Joliet
6. 113,586 Springfield (25.26)

Indiana
1. 783,438 Indianapolis

Iowa
1. 196,093 Des Moines

Kansas
1. 354,617 Wichita
2. 160,368 Overland Park
3. 145,757 Kansas City
4. 122,008 Topeka (2.907)

Kentucky
1. 266,798 Lexington-Fayette
2. 248,762 Louisville
3. 54,312 Owensboro
4. 50,663 Bowling Green
5. 42,687 Covington
6. 29,080 Richmond
7. 28,678 Hopkinsville
8. 27,468 Henderson
9. 27,408 Frankfort (9.734)

Louisiana
1. 469,032 New Orleans
2. 225,090 Baton Rouge (2.084)

Maine
1. 63,635 Portland
2. 35,922 Lewiston
3. 31,550 Bangor
4. 23,553 South Portland
5. 23,313 Auburn
6. 21,685 Biddeford
7. 18,618 Augusta (3.418)

Maryland
1. 628,670 Baltimore
2. 57,365 Gaithersburg
3. 56,128 Frederick
4. 55,213 Rockville
5. 53,660 Bowie
6. 36,953 Hagerstown
7. 36,178 Annapolis (17.38)

Massachusetts
1. 581,616 Boston

Michigan
1. 911,402 Detroit
2. 195,601 Grand Rapids
3. 136,016 Warren
4. 126,182 Sterling Heights
5. 120,292 Flint
6. 118,379 Lansing (7.699)

Minnesota
1. 373,188 Minneapolis
2. 280,404 St. Paul (1.331)

Mississippi
1. 179,599 Jackson

Missouri
1. 442,768 Kansas City
2. 332,223 St. Louis
3. 150,867 Springfield
4. 112,079 Independence
5. 88,534 Columbia
6. 77,052 Lee's Summit
7. 72,663 St. Joseph
8. 63,677 O'Fallon
9. 61,253 St. Charles
10. 53,397 St. Peters
11. 51,018 Florissant
12. 49,398 Blue Springs
13. 47,067 Chesterfield
14. 46,373 Joplin
15. 37,757 University City
16. 37,550 Jefferson City (11.79)

Montana
1. 95,220 Billings
2. 60,722 Missoula
3. 56,155 Great Falls
4. 32,519 Butte-Silver Bow
5. 30,753 Bozeman
6. 26,718 Helena (3.564)

Nebraska
1. 404,267 Omaha
2. 235,594 Lincoln (1.716)

Nevada
1. 517,017 Las Vegas
2. 214,852 Henderson
3. 193,882 Reno
4. 144,502 North Las Vegas
5. 77,295 Sparks
6. 55,311 Carson City (9.347)

New Hampshire
1. 108,871 Manchester
2. 87,285 Nashua
3. 41,823 Concord (2.603)

New Jersey
1. 277,911 Newark
2. 239,097 Jersey City
3. 150,782 Paterson
4. 123,215 Elizabeth
5. 85,314 Trenton (3.258)

New Mexico
1. 471,856 Albuquerque
2. 76,990 Las Cruces
3. 66,476 Santa Fe (7.098)

New York
1. 8,085,742 New York
2. 285,018 Buffalo
3. 215,093 Rochester
4. 197,388 Yonkers
5. 144,001 Syracuse
6. 93,919 Albany (86.09)

North Carolina
1. 584,658 Charlotte
2. 316,802 Raleigh (1.845)

North Dakota
1. 91,484 Fargo
2. 56,344 Bismarck (1.624)

Ohio
1. 728,432 Columbus

Oklahoma
1. 523,303 Oklahoma City

Oregon
1. 538,544 Portland
2. 142,914 Salem (3.768)

Pennsylvania
1. 1,479,339 Philadelphia
2. 325,337 Pittsburgh
3. 105,958 Allentown
4. 101,373 Erie
5. 80,305 Reading
6. 74,320 Scranton
7. 72,570 Bethlehem
8. 55,351 Lancaster
9. 48,322 Harrisburg (30.61)

Rhode Island
1. 176,365 Providence

South Carolina
1. 117,357 Columbia

South Dakota
1. 133,834 Sioux Falls
2. 60,876 Rapid City
3. 24,086 Aberdeen
4. 20,191 Watertown
5. 18,464 Brookings
6. 14,677 Mitchell
7. 13,939 Pierre (9.601)

Tennessee
1. 645,978 Memphis
2. 544,765 Nashville-Davidson (1.186)

Texas
1. 2,009,690 Houston
2. 1,214,725 San Antonio
3. 1,208,318 Dallas
4. 672,011 Austin (2.991)

Utah
1. 179,894 Salt Lake City

Vermont
1. 39,148 Burlington
2. 17,103 Rutland
3. 16,285 South Burlington
4. 9,166 Barre
5. 8,717 Essex Junction
6. 7,945 Montpelier (4.927)

Virginia
1. 439,467 Virginia Beach
2. 241,727 Norfolk
3. 210,834 Chesapeake
4. 194,729 Richmond (2.257)

Washington
1. 569,101 Seattle
2. 196,790 Tacoma
3. 196,624 Spokane
4. 151,654 Vancouver
5. 112,344 Bellevue
6. 96,643 Everett
7. 81,711 Federal Way
8. 81,567 Kent
9. 80,223 Yakima
10. 71,289 Bellingham
11. 59,334 Kennewick
12. 58,789 Lakewood
13. 54,028 Renton
14. 52,380 Shoreline
15. 46,391 Redmond
16. 45,573 Kirkland
17. 44,655 Auburn
18. 43,963 Olympia (12.94)

West Virginia
1. 51,394 Charleston

Wisconsin
1. 586,941 Milwaukee
2. 218,432 Madison (2.687)

Wyoming
1. 54,374 Cheyenne

We now return you to your regularly scheduled subject of travel.
--
Mark Brader | "Don't be a luddy-duddy! Don't be a mooncalf!
Toronto | Don't be a jabbernowl! You're not those, are you?"
| --W.C. Fields, "The Bank Dick"

My text in this article is in the public domain.

On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 17:57:51 GMT in rec.travel.usa-canada, Tim923
wrote:

Why are state capital cities often relatively obscure small cities?

Often the rural residents of a new state didn't want the biggest
city to control the state's government.

On Wed, 08 Sep 2004 07:56:32 -0500 in rec.travel.usa-canada,
(Miguel Cruz) wrote:

That explains Juneau.

in 1906, it was the largest city in alaska. los anchorage
wouldn't be founded for another 10 years.

it stayed the capital at statehood because other communities
distrusted anchorage.