There’s a 350,000 square mile vertical belt of land that stretches across the contiguous United States from Canada to Mexico.
There are plenty of small towns in the belt whose populations add up to around 3.1 million people, but why aren’t there more people?
This land makes up 12% of the total land mass of the United States, and is larger than every state besides Alaska, and yet hardly anybody lives there.
Geography By Geoff explores why this area is so sparsely populated in the fantastic video below:
Geography By Geoff: “The United States has an interesting population distribution. You can find any number of videos talking about why so many more people live on the eastern half of the country. But what’s rarely talked about is this large empty belt in the middle of the country that has less than 1% of the total U.S. population. In this video, we go over some of the reasons why this area, from Canada to Mexico, is so relatively underpopulated.”