Most populous cities in the United States in the years 1800, 1850, 1900 and 1950 Quiz

Can you name the most populous cities in the United States in the years 1800, 1850, 1900 and 1950?

created by Booger

Enter a city in the box below
Correctly named cities will show up below
Answers do not have to be guessed in order
Source: US Census Bureau
Also try: Historical City Populations

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Show Missed Answers

1800
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

1850
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

1900
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

1950
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

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Historical City Populations	US Cities 1900	Most Populous Cities (US)

There are 81 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

Historical US City Populations Quiz

by Booger

Created Apr 5, 2009 in History
Featured Apr 5, 2009
Game Plays 197,805

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	DirtyKash:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 04:50 GMT		61 points
	I congratulate in advance anyone who correctly identified the cities #5 to #10 from 1800.

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	clavinfield:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 04:52 GMT		12 points
	Interesting list! I suppose if I took US history at some point in my life, it would have helped, but I just went with the notion to guess East Coast cities, and worked out okay.

	Morbo:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 04:53 GMT		7 points
	@DirtyKash: I got Nos. 5, 9 and 10 from 1800. Those aren't tough if you think about port cities on the East Coast. I don't even know what in the hell Nos. 6 and 7 are. Same with No. 9 from 1850. Otherwise, I got 35/40. Fun quiz.

	dan8402:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:01 GMT		11 points
	It looks like I spent a lot of time guessing for cities that I would have never guessed in a million years. Very interesting how the US population has moved.

	Manders:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:05 GMT		77 points
	@Jeremy Burgher: Brooklyn used to be its own separate city and only joined NYC as a borough in 1894, after the Brooklyn Bridge was built. (Thanks, WIkipedia.)

	Everblue:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:06 GMT		8 points
	I do like how New York is number one the whole way through

	Antithesys:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:06 GMT		17 points
	@Jeremy: Brooklyn wasn't incorporated into NYC until the turn of the century.

	greekmike:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:15 GMT		9 points
	Northern Liberties is very much a part of the Philadelphia city limits. Interesting that they considered it a separate "city" in 1800.

	JohnJF:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:42 GMT		17 points
	I remember watching Welcome Back Kotter reruns with my mother and her pointing out that the "Brooklyn: America's 4th Largest City" wasn't true, as it wasn't a city. Now, I would never blame my mother for failure on an irrelevant online quiz, but...

	jaspa:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 05:50 GMT		25 points
	Its incredible how far St. Louis has declined in this list. It was 4th in the country in 1900, and now is 52nd as of the Census Bureau's 2007 estimate. This puts St. Louis just behind Wichita, Kansas...

	Samsonite:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 06:14 GMT		27 points
	Even today, if you took Brooklyn or Queens out of NYC, their populations would both rank them at #4 in the US, with the rest of NYC still being #1.

	Liberal:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 06:36 GMT		6 points
	A lot of East Coast here. I learned something about Brooklyn now.

	Gordo:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 06:36 GMT		5 points
	It used to be much more common for large cities to swallow up suburbs, hence Brooklyn and Spring Garden. Now, there are too many advantages to remaining separate, as small areas make is much easier to self-segregate by income and race.

	SowCrates:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 06:52 GMT		7 points
	Pretty steep drop from Providence, Rhode Island to Salem in terms of most often guessed. I guess that makes sense, since that would be the most obscure cities from the longest time ago. Still, I thought that there would be more people like me that would miss Providence, but Cincinnati was a natural extension of a guess after getting Cleveland, but there's over a 20% difference between how often the two Ohio cities are guessed

	jessbowen:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 06:58 GMT		9 points
	I was born in Salem, MA and I didn't even consider guessing it. I'm stunned. No Texas cities appear? No Florida cities? I liked the world version of this quiz better, but this one was pretty good too.

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	buiksloot:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 07:44 GMT		8 points
	Another EPIC quiz, booger! Please sporcle, do this for more countries! :D

	buiksloot:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 07:45 GMT		6 points
	Detroit and Los Angeles, born with years of each other, metaphorically speaking. :D

	debbiedoesnothin:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 08:06 GMT		9 points
	@jessbowen - The migration of people to the south and southwest (incl. Texas and Florida) has only started in the last 50 years or so, since air conditioning became more available.

	swellwrench:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 08:25 GMT		21 points
	The low number of people getting Cincinnati vs. Cleveland is probably largely due to spelling

	davidr:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 09:03 GMT		10 points
	Another top quiz, Booger — keep 'em coming!

	BigDave:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 09:11 GMT		5 points
	Great quiz. Very informative.

	Statto2:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 09:34 GMT		15 points
	@westwingerjd - in earliest years of this quiz the USA didn't extend that far from the Eastern Seaboard! Interesting quiz, I think a British equivalent would probably ought to have something like 1500 for the first list, it would be interesting to see old cathedral cities like Norwich and York being eclipsed by industrial cities like Birmingham and Manchester.

	Kicking222:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 12:15 GMT		4 points
	Another awesome quiz. I'm really digging these historical populations games. I also did much better on this one than the worldwide one- only missed Salem, Brooklyn, and (of course) the three that were incorporated into Philly.

	tcalleen:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 12:45 GMT		13 points
	Trust me, as someone who lived in Texas before air conditioning, the people that didn't migrate to the south were very wise!

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	newenglander:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 12:52 GMT		-4 points
	For all of you wondering about Brooklyn, in the 18003 it was its own city, separate from nyc.

	DerKomissar:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 13:07 GMT		4 points
	Damn. I didn't get Brooklyn, and I live there. Pathetic.

	Bretzky:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 13:10 GMT		14 points
	@Mike T.: Northern Liberties was a separate city from Philadelphia at the time. In 1854 many of the surrounding communities in Philadelphia County were absorbed by the city. Southwark and Spring Garden have this same distinction.

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	Handrejka:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 13:41 GMT		5 points
	I really enjoyed this quiz, didn't do too well compared with a lot of you but was happy with my result of 24

	Roman:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 15:00 GMT		4 points
	Yeah, the five boroughs of New York were formed in 1898, before that it was only Manhattan

	retsyn:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 15:47 GMT		5 points
	i got to 'brookl' and stopped... bad idea. guessed every other city in ohio it seems... and 3 'never heard of's in pennsylvania...

	radiosilence:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 15:48 GMT		7 points
	Considering we have nearly endless space to sprawl and low housing prices, maybe a city in Kansas will make the list in 2100!

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	kupfernick:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 17:44 GMT		5 points
	I missed Brooklyn but should have gotten it from Welcome Back, Kotter. Missed the three Philly areas. Learn something new everyday (you play on Sporcle). Great quiz!

	pbrown:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 18:08 GMT		3 points
	great quiz! you should make the same one from except 1650, 1700 and 1750

	Antithesys:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 18:15 GMT		7 points
	I like how many of the people wondering why Brooklyn is separate from NYC are also giving indications that they actually live in New York.

	theGrit:	Apr 5th, 2009 at 18:40 GMT		6 points
	@radiosilence: Doubt it. I lived in Kansas for two years, and as soon as I finished grad school, I fled for my life. And most of the sprawl is from Kansas City making cities like Lawrence and Olathe bigger, but they aren't anywhere close to breaking records. Half of Kansas City's sprawl stays in Missouri, anyway.