The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-04-15
SIZE OF STATES AND COUNTIES.


Information respecting the area of the
states and counties of the United States
has been available for a long time, Of
course. to those taking the time to look
1t up in the encyclopedias, gazetteers and
Biographies. This, however, has not been
conducive to comparisons, except in spe-
cial cases and for special purposes. But
when the area in square miles of every
state and county in the country comes
succinctly tebulated, as it does in re-
cent census bulletin. it is easy and to
degree entertaining to note the bigness
and the littleness of some of our political
divisions Some things that are just
bit surprising, too, are learned from the
official figures. Massachusetts, for in
stance, has always made so much racket
in national affairs, and so exerted herself
TO run not only the affairs of her own
people, but to influence the government,
morals and mode of living of about all
other peoples, that the uninformed might
reasonably suppose Massachusetts to be
one of the very largest of all the Ameri-
can states. But that is not so. Even
Vermont is bigger by something like 1000
square miles, while Maine is near
" four times as large. South
Carolina is three times as big
England hot bed of advanced thought
wouldn't be a patch on Georgia. If IL
were set down in this state it wouldn't
cover much more than fifteen counties,
and we should have $1,000 square miles OF
territory left untouched.
New York is another state that fails 10
show up as big as its reputation, in COM
parison with its sister states. Wyoming
is nearly twice as large, and North Car
DINA contains about 5000 square miles
more. Texas is, of course, the fat lady
of the sisterhood, with her 265.7sO square
miles, from which a dozen states might
be carved. But it must not be supposed
that Texas is the giant of the family. The
popular idea to that effect is wrong. Our
mightiest political division is not a state
at ALL but a territory, with no voice in
its own government. 1t is Alaska, and It's
prodigeous area is 590,sS4 square miles. 1t
is approximately one-fifth the size of the
remainder of the territory of the United
States. There wasn't much fuss made
when this immense body of land was ac-
quired by the United States. Many per-
sons did not know an annexation move
ment was on foot until Alaska had been
bought and coded. But how different in
the case of Hawaii! To judge from the
amount of noise over Hawaii one might
conceive it to be about as big as two
Alaskas. But it isn't as big as Massa-
chusetts. In fact, it is smaller than New
Jersey, and contains but few more miles
than Connecticut. There are single coun-
ties in California much larger than
Hawaii, one of them being three times as
large.
The smaller counties are, naturally to
be found in the older and more populous
states, the average in the East and South
being from 300 to GOO miles per county. In
the West the county governments stretch
over more territory, running in some in
stances to 10000 square miles and more.
The biggest of all the counties is Custer,
in Montana, with 20 400 square miles. If
Maryland and Massachusetts were set
down in Custer county, they would bare
| ly lap over the edges, while better than
eighteen states of the size of Rhode ISL
and could be carved out of it. The small
est county, naturally enough, is in the
smallest state. 1t is the county of Bristol,
r. l., with an area of twenty-five miles.
The counties of Georgia are fairly uni
form in SIZE Notwithstanding the long
jump from 80 miles area, in the case of
Glascock, to 1,123 in the case of Coffee.
There are six Georgia counties having an
area of more than 1000 miles. They are
Burke, Charlton, Clinch, Coffee, Decatur
and Tattnall. The counties containing
cities are relatively small. Bibb has 254
miles, Chatham 400, Fulton ia, Musco-
! gee 255 and Richmond 272