Where Mississippi's People Lived, 1800–2025

Two ways to watch 220 years of settlement across all 82 counties. Absolute population plots a dot for every ~600 residents, so dots multiply as the state grows. Share of state draws a heat map of how the population is distributed each census. A third view, Peak decade, colors every county by the census when it hit its all-time population high. Press play to watch people redistribute toward Jackson's suburbs, the Gulf Coast, and DeSoto County near Memphis even as the Delta and cotton counties fade.