250 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
Americans remain highly mobile. On average, nearly
one in seven moves each year—to a new block,
city, region, or country. And it has ever been thus:
migration, whether forced or voluntary, driven by
catastrophe or by opportunity, has been a hallmark of
American history. John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia,
Malachy Postlethwayt’s 1757 map of the slave trade,
Charles Gratiot’s 1837 map of Indian territory, and
Charles Preuss' 1846 map of the Oregon Trail are just
a few examples of the continuous settlement—and
resettlement—of North America.
In the twentieth century, domestic migration
profoundly realigned not just the population, but
the American political and economic landscape
as well. As late as 1900, the nation’s people and
industrial capacity were still concentrated in the
northeast quadrant of the country, bounded to the
east by Illinois and to the south by Pennsylvania. As
that region continued to grow through World War
II, however, so too did California and Florida. Los
Angeles could never have expanded beyond a city of
a few hundred thousand without an engineered water
supply; once that resource was secured, California’s
capacity seemed limitless.
In the 1930s the devastating dust storms on the
Great Plains created a virtual exodus to Southern
California that deeply shaped its political culture. The
extraordinary labor demands and federal investment
of World War II brought another flood of migrants,
which continued with the robust federal investment
during the Cold War. By 1990 California received
more than 20 percent of the contracts awarded by the
Department of Defense. The first flow map here hints
at some of that movement from the manufacturing
belt of the Midwest and the Northeast toward the Far
West at mid-century. Hidden by the map is the degree
to which California was the overwhelming destination
within the West, gaining 1.1 million residents between
1955 and 1960. By the early 1960s, it was the most
populous state in the country.
While California’s rise was certainly the most
dramatic, other regions also shifted significantly in
the twentieth century. The most remarkable of these
was the South. For the first half of the century, that
region consistently lost population, particularly its
rural areas. African Americans led the migration out
A NATION ON THE MOVE
US Census, “Regional Migration,
1955 to 1960” and “Regional Migration,
1995 to 2000,” 2007
of the South to the Northeast and the Midwest, and
to a lesser extent the Far West. Within the South,
farmers and sharecroppers migrated to small towns,
particularly as agricultural prices remained low in the
1920s and 1930s.
But after World War II, improvements in
infrastructure and a rebounding economy began to
slow that trend. Just as the Northeast and Midwest
were experiencing industrial decline, the South
picked up momentum, buoyed by federal contracts
and lower wages that attracted employers from other
regions. By the 1990s, the South recorded the highest
rate of domestic migration of any region in the
country, especially in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Austin.
That demographic shift from the Northeast to the
South shown on the second map was also augmented
by the migration of retirees to Florida. All of this,
of course, was made possible by innovations in
air conditioning.
The brisk growth of the South and West in the
second half of the century also transformed the
landscape of political power across the country.
Between 1950 and 1990, California gained twenty-
two seats in the House of Representatives while
New York lost twelve. The Southwest, Florida, and
the Pacific Northwest gained as well, while states
of the Northeast, Midwest, and Great Plains all
declined in political representation. This nationwide
reapportionment occurred alongside the shift of the
South from a Democratic to a Republican stronghold.
A return to the 1880 electoral map on page 156 shows
what an astonishing reversal this was. Though the
Civil War still shaped some of the region’s social
and cultural sensibilities, it no longer determined
its politics. White Southerners now embraced the
Republican Party in a way that would have been
unimaginable in the first half of the twentieth century.
Political strategist Kevin Phillips observed the
early stirrings of this change in the late 1960s,
and coined the term “Sunbelt” to denote the
South and Southwest. To be sure, there are limits
to the Sunbelt as a coherent region given sharp
distinctions among states and between urban and
rural cultures. Moreover, trends can change quickly:
in the 1980s and 1990s the most noticeable trend
was the outmigration from California. While the
second flow map identifies interregional movement,
it hides the significant migration from California to
neighboring states, principally Colorado, Nevada,
and Washington. Few at mid-century would have
predicted that 750,000 people would leave California
between 1995 and 2000, a loss exceeded only by the
900,000 who left New York.