Saturday, December 4, 2010

Huh?

Georgia is ranked 24th in size in the US (about median for the states). It is about 59.5 thousand square miles and has 159 counties, 159 seperate governments (plus several cities with their own governments like Atlanta). And more than 159 school systems.

California is ranked 3rd in size in the US (Alaska and Texas are first) and has 58 counties in the 163.5 thousand square miles.

Does that not seem strange to you?

2 comments:

LSquared32 said...

No, I don't find it strange. You don't understand unless you have lived out west, but there are large parts of all 3 of those states that are very sparsely populated because, you see, there's no water. That means you can't just go live way off the grid, and sink a well wherever you want because...there's no water. Except in winter. Got to trap those winter rains and snows so you've got water for the year.

Moving east of the Mississippi was quite a change for me. You know, out here water just falls from the sky. You don't have to dig irrigation ditches or lay pipes or dam rivers to make reservoirs. Lots of counties are very big geographically without including too many more people/towns than your counties do.

LSquared32 said...

Also, your state was founded much earlier than those out west states. The later it got, the more long distance communication was taken for granted (telegraph and trains were around when those counties were still getting organized) and so having a geographically large county wasn't as big of a problem.