Quote:
Originally Posted by Centropolis
100 years ago the united states was a heavily urban nation primarily centered upon the midwest and northeast.
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overall, i wouldn't say that the nation was heavily urbanzied back then, but of the major cities that did exist, they definitely were concentrated in the NE and MW for the most part, with the big exception of coastal california.
here's one source i found for metro areas over 500,000 in 1920:
NE - green
MW - blue
West - red
Metropolitan Areas -- 1920
1.New York -- 8,490,694 ***
2.Chicago -- 3,521,789 **
3.Philadelphia -- 2,714,271 **
4.Boston -- 2,315,111 **
5.Pittsburgh -- 1,759,989 *
6.Detroit -- 1,305,798 *
7.St. Louis -- 1,139,877 **
8.San Francisco -- 1,009,467
9.Los Angeles -- 997,830
10.Cleveland -- 972,162 *
11.Baltimore -- 852,051
12.Buffalo -- 753,393
13.Minneapolis -- 704,566
14.Cincinnati -- 628,999 *
15.Washington -- 571,882 *
16.Milwaukee -- 539,449
17.Providence -- 536,572
18.Kansas City -- 528,833
source:
https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.phpt=913696
asterisks indicate the number of MLB teams a given metro area had at the time. 16 teams located in just 10 cities all in the northeast quadrant of the nation.
the main reason that SF and LA didn't have MLB in those days is that travel time by train out to the west coast (~3 days) was simply too great for MLB's intensive schedule.
the arrival of large scale passenger air travel in the 1950s finally made it practical for MLB to expand out west.