Seriously, what’s with that?

35 comments

  1. Back in the day they liked to pick a capital close the middle of a state, so it would be easier to ride a horse out to the capital to vote.

    That being said you can’t always know which town is gonna blow up, or die out. I grew up by a community that only has 280 people, at one point it was very prosperous until trains became common, due to its proximity to the river.

  3. Capitals were established at the time of the states’ accession to the union or before. Over time, geography and economics have made other cities larger – but just because a city is larger doesn’t mean it ought to be the state’s capital.

  4. Most state capitals were established well before the population of those states exploded to what they are today. There is also the fact that the state capital has pretty much nothing to do with the population of the city it is located in. I’m not sure why it would.

    The capital is where the business of government is conducted. Typically it’s in a central location which is pretty important in states that are larger than some countries (or at least it was in a time before cars, rail, and airplanes). There is also a certain amount of historical momentum. It’s not like states are going to decide to move their capitals after 100-250 years for no good reason. It would not make much sense to move the capital just because some city happens to be bigger than the capital city.

  5. State Capitals were typically chosen based on being Geographically Centrally Located. Population size was not really a factor, nor wanted.

  6. The capital of South Carolina was moved to Columbia as a sort of compromise back in the day. The coast had the largest and wealthiest cities— it was economically and politically important and active. However, the mountains were also economically important and wanted a share of political power. The compromise was to move the capital in between the two. I imagine it’s a similar story in other states, in addition to what people are saying about population growth happening after capitals were chosen.

  7. Why should they? Contrary to popular belief: government administration doesn’t actually grow a city. What makes an area boom is industry, trade, etc. Have you noticed that 99% of large cities are on some kind of water?

  8. Everyone always gets annoyed that Miami isn’t the capital of Florida and it is instead Tallahassee. What they seem to forget is that travel in 1800s (when the capital was picked) was very difficult. It was too hard to get to Miami at the time.

    Tallahassee was chosen because it was between Pensacola and St Augustine.

  9. First of all, a good number of state capitals are the largest city (AZ, AR, CO, GA, HI, ID, IN, IA, MA, MS, OH, OK, RI, TN, UT, WV, and WY off the top of my head, plus MN functionally since Twin Cities are basically one big city). Second, a lot of state capitals were established before the largest city emerged that way. For example, Tallahassee, Juneau, and Richmond were the largest cities in their states until other metropolitan areas superseded them. Third, a lot more state capitals are in cities that, while not the largest, are still one of the biggest in the state (examples include AL, CT, LA, WI, and NM). When you take those into account, the biggest city thing makes a lot more sense, since the vast majority are either in the biggest city, a former biggest city, or one of the biggest in the state, especially in states that don’t have an obvious top contender.

  10. Capitals were usually centrally located for ease of travel from all points within a state, while biggest cities, were often coastal or on a river (often used as borders rather than centrally located.

    Additionally, it was a way to keep the wealthy/business elite further from the influences on politics.

  11. A state capital needs to have government offices, and then a while lot of other offices for lawyers and other people who deal with the state government.

    For a city to experience high population growth, it must have a lot of jobs. To have a lot of jobs, it needs some kind of commercial or industrial base to generate those jobs. And in the 19th and 20th centuries, this means the city must be geographically close to some kind of transportation network or important resource.

    Land close to important resources is expensive. State government offices don’t need to be in these favored locations, so it’s cheaper if they aren’t. Conversely, if you have some non-government business that doesn’t need to be in a specific location, you’ll look for the cheapest rent – which won’t be in the capital city, because the lawyers and lobbyists create additional demand and so rents tend to be higher.

    As a result of all of this, state capitals tend not to be in the same cities as the major historical centers of industry and commerce, and new industries like web development tend not to be focused on the state capitals. There’s a natural tendency – not an inevitability, just a tendency – for the state capital to occupy its own space.

  14. Detroit was originally Michigan’s capital. But because of it’s proximity to Canada and strained relations between the US and Britian, they made Lansing the Capital.

  16. America is a much younger “established” country than much of the world.

    Almost every state makes sense why their capital should be where it is if you look into the history of it.

    Then when you see how much was spent to establish a government base in a city, combined with how easy and common it is to move across the U.S., then it doesn’t make much sense to just move a state capital.

  17. It’s not like this with every state. There are some cases where the largest city is also the capital (Boston, Atlanta, Denver, and Phoenix in particular come to mind)

  19. Capital is usually somewhere in the geographic center. Larger cities tend to be where there’s a LOT of water.

  20. It’s tough to predict in, say, 1650, which city will be the largest in 2022.

  21. What do you think the populations of the individual states were when the capitals were selected? The entire United States population was about 2.5 million when the states formed the union, and even less than that when some of those capitals were selected. That’s 2.5 million spread out over [13 states](https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w768/upload/d2/f2/89/colonies-01.png) or about 90 million less people than is living in those same 13 states today.

    The population of the entire 50 states wasn’t much more either. Capitals were usually chosen for central locations, and them not being in the financial “center” of a state in order to balance out power between regions was often considered as well.

  22. Various reasons:

    * To be more centralized – important in the day before cars or trains
    * The capital was a major city back when it was founded
    * America wasn’t always urbanized and a much larger percentage lived in rural areas

    Like take NY with Albany:

    * More central location
    * Home to several powerful land owning families
    * Older than NYC and not much smaller at the time

  23. State capitals were mostly chosen because they were centrally located (population wise at the time, not necessarily geographically) and/or because they were on a major river, bay, etc.

    In modern times, some of those reasons don’t really apply. We don’t use rivers a primary means of transportation any more, for example. It doesn’t make any sense to change the state capital after decades (or in the case of most of the east coast…centuries) just because we have interstates crisscrossing the country now.

    There’s no reason the state capital has to be, or even should be, the biggest city in the state. In some cases it is, but that’s probably not even 1/2 of state capitals.

  24. Why would you want the city that already dominates the economy of the state having the most influence over the government too? That’s going to fuck over the rest of the state and leave people that are already underrepresented stuck in the mud.

  25. Usually political compromise that’s been long forgotten. Pennsylvania’s used to be Philadelphia but moving it to Harrisburg was seen as a way to limit Philly’s power and make the western half of the state feel more involved in the running of the state. How effective it’s been at either is debatable but that’s what happened in my home state and similar things happened in others.

  26. There’s an interesting correlation between levels of state corruption and the distance of a state’s capital from its population centers. See: Trenton, Albany, Baton Rouge.

  28. Capitals were established hundreds of years ago and even then they usually weren’t decided by population. Like Pocatello used to be the most populated city in Idaho in the early 1900s/late 1800s but it wasn’t decided to be the capital

  29. They are centrally located. They also tend to be a compromise between rural and urban areas. The idea is to represent the entire state population.

  30. They are usually the central location in the state.

    It’s based on geography, not population.

  31. Columbia is the second largest city in SC behind Charleston. It is a planned city, placed in the middle of the state to accommodate the legislators from the Upstate. It was founded in 1786.

    Charleston was established in 1670.

  32. Capitals are oftentimes more centrally located, large cities are often near locations where multiple points of trade intersect. These two things are often not the same.

  33. They’re often established in a location central to the state (or between big population centers, etc.) because representatives from around the state are elected to conduct the state’s business there.

  34. I believe Springfield is the capital of Illinois and not Chicago because it was where Lincoln lived. It’s also more centered within the state than Chicago is.

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