Why do the states get larger as you move west?

Question

I have the feeling that it's because transportation allowed for the broadening of territories as technology improved which coincided with the push towards the west...

Answer 1

Most all the West was originally made up of territories, which encompassed 3-5 states or more, as they are now known. You can research the Territories and learn how they became divided.

Answer 2

States were incorporated into the union based on population. With the federal "manifest destiny" the U.S. wanted to secure natural borders to the north and south efficiently. Territories because states as soon as their population would allow. Fewer people in a larger area made for larger states.

Answer 3

All of the above answers are good.

Interestingly, though, Michigan, well east of the Mississippi River (and the largest state east of the Mississippi River) is larger than 13 of the 23 states west of the Mississippi River. So, it isn't always true that the states get smaller as you move west.

Answer 4

The point made in your explanation is a good one. There are other reasons too that contributed to the increaed size of states: the desire for representation in Washington D.C. made achieving "statehood" imperative. Being the "rural" status of some teritorries put them at a disadvantage, large areas brought together any kind of collective power posssible to achieve this. Moreover, there were districts that although they had considerable local sway, needed to subsume themselves in order to get themselves properly represented. Some industries were also desireous of coming under collective representation.
Communications tech. like the telegraph also allowed disparate groups to be informed more readily despite distances.We have seen a lot of such trends with the "globalizations" of today.

Answer 5

To become a state, the territory has to have at least 600,000 people. Out west, the land is barren and the people were scarce. They probably expanded the territory to meet the statehood requirement.

Answer 6

My theory:

The farmland in a state like Wyoming is not nearly as productive as in say Ohio so it required more acres to support a family.

So people ended up being more spread out and so it took a larger territory to have the number of people required for statehood.

Answer 7

The states out west are bigger because they are newer. We started taking a little bit of land at a time which became littlle states but then we got smarter and was able to take bigger land so the states got bigger

Answer 8

real simple to form a state you most have a certain population so they had to make the western states larger to get a larger population density in there borders because they where not that populated at the time as the east was

Answer 9

because during the louisianna purchase land out west was $1280

Answer 10

Mainly due to natural terrain.