Friday Eye Candy: Mapping the Least Dense Places in the U.S.

"I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for those maps that show the crazy geographic concentration of things like wealth and population," begins a recent post. He clearly wasn't talking to us at Planetizen because then he would know that we are a sucker for those maps that show crazy geographic concentration of things like wealth and population.

The map Ingraham shared with his audience on this occasion is meant to illustrate the "jaw-dropping emptiness of America." Sourced from Reddit, the original map shows "the enormous chunk of land where only 1 percent of the population lives." Ingraham updated the map for a bit more legibility and with the 2014 population numbers from the U.S. Census.

Ingraham provides a few different ways of putting the data shown on the map in perspective, in addition to offering one very specific mark of distinction:

The least-populated place in the United States is Alaska's Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area. At over 145,000 square miles, it's larger than New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia -- combined. But it's home to only 5,547 people, for a population density of fewer than 4 people every 100 miles.