America’s Most Misplaced State Capitals (Only 52% of Us Live Within 100 Miles of Our Own)

Only 51.8% of Americans live within 100 miles of their own state capital. Florida’s capital reaches just 3.9% of its population. Alaska’s reaches 6.2%. At the other extreme, four small Northeastern states are fully covered by a circle drawn from their capitol. The full 50-state ranking is below, with a dedicated page for every state.

The 10 most misplaced US state capitals

These are the state capitals whose 100-mile radius captures the smallest share of their state’s population. In every case the political capital is hundreds of miles from the state’s largest city.

The 10 most centralised US state capitals

At the other extreme: capitals where almost the entire state population lives within a 100-mile circle. Four states are physically small enough that the circle fully encloses them.

All 50 states ranked

The full ranking, ordered from most to least centralised. Click any state for the dedicated page — population captured, ZIP-level breakdown, and a prefilled link into the Map Radius Tool with the 100-mile circle already drawn around that state’s capitol.

Open the page for every state

Every state has its own dedicated page with the precise radius details, the cities inside and outside the circle, and a one-click link into the Map Radius Tool already centred on the capitol. Useful for journalists, local-news writers, and anyone asking “is my state capital where the people actually are?”

Methodology

For each of the 50 US states (DC excluded — see FAQ): we use the geographic coordinates of the state capitol building as the centre point. We draw a 100-mile geodesic (great-circle) radius around it using the haversine formula on the WGS84 spheroid (accurate to better than 0.5%). For every ZIP code in the state, we test whether the ZIP centroid lat/lng falls inside the radius. We then sum the population of every ZIP that does, and divide by the state’s total Census-estimated population.

ZIP-level lat/lng and population come from SimpleMaps' uszips dataset, which integrates US Census 2020 ACS at the ZCTA (ZIP Code Tabulation Area) level — 41,554 records covering essentially every populated address in the United States. State capital coordinates are the USGS GNIS records for each state capitol complex (the seat of government, not the geographic centre of the capital city). Why ZIP centroids and not Census block group centroids? Block-group-level computation moves the headline figures by less than 0.5 percentage points in any state and does not change the ranking. ZCTA-level is the more reproducible and journalist-friendly granularity.

“Largest city outside the radius” is the city whose ZIP codes (summed) sit outside the 100-mile circle and have the highest total population. The distance reported is the haversine distance from the capital to the population-weighted centroid of that city’s ZIPs. The “population centroid of the state” is the population-weighted lat/lng across every ZIP in the state — the point at which the state would balance on a pin if every resident were a unit weight.

Limitations and caveats

1. Haversine distance is straight-line, not driving distance. In mountain states and across large bodies of water (Lake Michigan, Hawaii, southeast Alaska) the actual driving radius is much smaller. Use the Drive Time Map for road-network reality.
2. ZIP centroids are approximations of where people live. Large ZIPs (rural Montana, parts of Nevada) have a single representative point for a multi-hundred-square-mile area. This smooths real population gradients but does not change the state-level ranking.
3. Cross-state populations within the radius are excluded by design — the question is “what fraction of this state's population does the capital reach?” not “how many people live within 100 miles of this capital, regardless of state.” The latter is a different and easier question.
4. State capital coordinates are the capitol building itself. Using the geographic centre of the capital city instead would change individual state numbers by <1 percentage point.

Why state capitals are where they are

Most US state capitals were chosen in the late 18th or 19th century, often as a deliberate compromise between competing urban centres (Albany was chosen over New York City; Sacramento was chosen over San Francisco; Tallahassee was chosen as a midpoint between Pensacola and St. Augustine when Florida was a much smaller state). The compromise sites stayed put while the state populations grew elsewhere — typically toward warmer or more economically dynamic regions. Florida’s capital is the cleanest example: Tallahassee was a sensible midpoint of Florida’s 1820s population (concentrated in the panhandle). Two centuries later, with Miami, Orlando, and Tampa swelling the south of the state, the capital reaches just 3.9% of Floridians within a 100-mile drive.

Smaller, older Northeastern states had less room for the population to shift. Boston has been the dominant city of Massachusetts since 1630 and remains the capital and largest city. Providence, RI is the capital and largest city. Hartford, CT and Trenton, NJ sit close enough to their state’s historical population centres that even with the rise of Stamford, Bridgeport, Newark, and Jersey City, the 100-mile circle still covers the entire state.

Draw it yourself

Every per-state page below includes a one-click prefilled link to the Map Radius Toolwith the 100-mile circle already drawn around that state's capitol. You can change the radius (50 miles for the urban-suburban question, 250 miles for a “day’s drive” framing), switch between miles and kilometres, or drag the centre to compare the capital's reach with the reach of the actual largest city.

For a different angle — the same radius drawn around any point of your choice (your home, your office, an evacuation site) — see our long-form guide 25 Practical Uses for a Radius Map.

Frequently asked questions

Download the dataset

The full per-state dataset — rank, capital coordinates, population captured inside the radius, ZIP-level counts, population centroid, distance from capital to centroid, and the largest city outside each radius — is freely downloadable under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence. Attribution required: SimpleMapLab (2026).

⬇ Download CSV (state-capital-radius.csv)⬇ Download JSON (state-capital-radius.json)

Press & cite this study

Journalists, podcasters, newsletter writers, and academics are welcome to cite this study and reuse the dataset under the CC-BY 4.0 licence. Standard attribution: SimpleMapLab (2026). The 100-Mile Radius Around Every US State Capital. simplemaplab.com/studies/state-capital-radius.

For press inquiries, custom data cuts, high-resolution map renders, or correction requests: hello@simplemaplab.com. We respond within one business day for confirmed press requests.

What you can do with this data — under the CC-BY licence — includes reproducing the per-state numbers in articles or reports, adapting the maps (with attribution), and combining with other public datasets for derivative work. What we ask in return: a clear attribution and, where possible, a hyperlink back to the study page so readers can audit the methodology themselves.

Suggested citation

SimpleMapLab (2026). The 100-Mile Radius Around Every US State Capital. 50-state ranking with downloadable dataset under CC-BY 4.0. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/state-capital-radius.