• By
  • Phil Izzo

29%: The percentage of Americans who live in a coastal county.

The share of the population who live in counties on the coastline appears to have hit a plateau, but the number of Americans living near the water is the highest it has ever been.

The Census Bureau, which put together this excellent historical map, notes how the U.S. population has spread out over the history of the country. In 1790 the fledgling nation was small and concentrated in communities near the Atlantic Ocean in order to take advantage of trade routes with Europe. In the early days of the republic, nearly 1-in-3 Americans resided in a coastline county.

But as settlers moved out from the original 13 colonies and toward California, the share of the population that lived inland increased. The percentage of Americans who live in coastal counties bottomed in the late 1800s, as the nation stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Once the westward expansion was complete, more people began to congregate on the coasts, reaching a new peak of around 29% in 1990.

Though the percentage of people living on the coasts has stabilized, the number has continued to grow along with the population. In 1790, though 32% of Americans lived on the coast, the absolute number was just 1,238,000 people. In the most recent census of 2010, 88,642,000 Americans told the government that they live in counties that border the ocean.

The large number of people living near the water was put into sharp relief in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Government data on initial claims for unemployment benefits suggested that some 90,000 people were driven out of their jobs by the storm. Larger numbers of people on the coasts also means more potential victims from damaging weather events.



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