Really neat quiz but way too much time. I got the first 8 in about 30 seconds. After that I just started in the northeast and worked down and left until I got the last two and still had 2 minutes left. I am very surprised that Michigan wasn't on the list and somewhat surprised about New Jersey.
You should have known I'd have to defend our honor. :) St. Louis was a fur-trading post at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and the nearby Illinois River which connected the Mississippi River with the Great Lakes. The rivers attracted early settlement, and St. Louis became the commercial center for westward expansion as well as a center for river trade shipping goods south to New Orleans and on to Europe. The Kansas City-Independence-St. Joe region was the beginning point for the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe Trails and the Pony Express which attracted more outfitting businesses, and KC was also a fur trade town located on the river and became a shipping center for cattle. As always, follow the money.
The city of St. Louis was established in 1764, and Missouri became a state in 1821. Not only was it the site of the beginning and end of Lewis and Clark's expedition, it was, quite literally, the gateway to the West, as many people going westward through the Louisiana territory would go centrally through Missouri. Missouri actually had more people than Texas up until 1900.
Yeah, I know. :) I just would have thought that one of the Carolinas would have made it to a million first. Or perhaps Texas or Louisiana. Both were admitted to the union prior to 1857. But, with St Louis and all, makes sense.
Transportation and commerce on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Natchez Trace led to rapid growth for the cities of Memphis, Louisville, and the surrounding areas - somebody had to get all that cotton and tobacco to market and all the timber that came out of the area to build cities in other parts of the country.
Tha was a good quiz. It made me think of the most populous states back then. However, tha was harder than I thought. It was more challenging for me than I thought it would be in tha some states sort of threw me off. Kentucky and even Indiana and all tha. This quiz, naming the states of the United States tha were the earliest to reach a population of 1 million, was a good quiz. But the description might have a sneaky typo in it though.
The quiz should specify that this means population of white people only. This would explain why states with large slave populations (e.g., Georgia and North Carolina) don't make this list. North Carolina, for instance, had a million people by around 1840, though 245,000 of those were slaves. Georgia had 1.3 million by 1850, though 390,000 were slaves.
What about California? I realize that it was pretty sparsely inhabited in the early 1800s and wasn't a state until 1850, but the 1850s is also when its population boom started so I'd kinda expect it to be a near-miss here.
I thought the same, that the gold rush would have boomed it into a million well before 1857. But I suppose the sheer difficulty of getting there and settling there in the 19th century kept it nowhere near this list.
BIG, SNEEZE, SETS
MASS, ACHU, SETTS
If you want the 2 million version!
https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/1744710/first-us-states-to-reach-3-million-people