The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) is a

historical GIS A historical geographic information system (also written as historical GIS or HGIS) is a geographic information system that may display, store and analyze data of past geographies and track changes in time. It can be regarded as a tool for historic ...

project to create and freely disseminate a database incorporating all available aggregate census information for the United States between

1790 Events January–March * January 8 – United States President George Washington gives the first State of the Union address, in New York City. * January 11 – The 11 minor states of the Austrian Netherlands, which took ...

and 2010. The project has created one of the largest collections in the world of statistical census information, much of which was not previously available to the research community because of legacy data formats and differences between metadata formats. The statistical and geographic data are disseminated free of charge through a sophisticated online data access system. In addition, NHGIS has created historical and contemporary cartographic boundary

shapefile The shapefile format is a geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as a mostly open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other GIS software product ...

s compatible with every census, and over 50 million lines of metadata describing the collection. Historical U.S. state and county boundaries are available 1790–present, with smaller geographies available as the

U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...

created them. Census Tract boundaries are available 1910–present and Block Group and Block boundaries available 1990–present.GIS boundary file availability https://www.nhgis.org/user-resources/data-availability#boundary-files The cartographic boundary files and the tabular data are formatted so as to be easily linked for use in Geographic Information System software. NHGIS was launched in 2007 and is maintained by the

Minnesota Population Center The Minnesota Population Center (MPC) is a university-wide interdisciplinary research center at the University of Minnesota. MPC was established in 2000, absorbing two earlier population research organizations. The primary goals of the center are to ...

at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

and is funded by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

and the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

. Much of the historical data are viewable as tables or interactive maps in Social Explorer, a small company which offers both free and professional licenses.

References

External links

*
National Historical Geographic Information Systems citations
at

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National Historical Geographic Information Systems
online Forum at

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Social Explorer
Historical geographic information systems Demographics of the United States Demographic history of the United States Geographic data and information in the United States {{US-hist-stub