That’s how much land the United States has lost since 2000 — as if an entire small state vanished off the map.
But take heart — if you include lakes and rivers, the country got 2,659 square miles bigger in the past decade.
That’s according to the Census Bureau, which says that since 2000, the US gained 8,192 square miles in water territory, though that was offset by a loss of 5,533 square miles of land.
Did Canada occupy part of Maine? Did a bunch of the Hawaiian Islands sink into the Pacific? Did Connecticut secede and not bother to tell anyone?
The answer is a lot less sexy. According to the Census folks, the difference doesn’t represent an actual gain or loss of territory, but instead reflects more accurate measuring tools. In the past decade, GPS, satellites and advanced computer modeling have gotten better at mapping winding and irregularly shaped waterways.
The better measuring tools tell us that hey, that river is actually 14 feet wide, not 12. And so you gain some water here, lose a sliver of land there and it all adds up — to a grand total of 3,796,742 square miles. Which is still getting more crowded — with 87 Americans per square mile of land, up from 79 a decade ago, and 4.5 in 1790, when the country was much, much smaller.
So rest easy that the US hasn’t lost any land. But it’s still a good idea to keep an eye on Connecticut.