DailyMail bemoans the number of counties without a grocery store. Most of them are in Texas and the Dry Line parts of the plains states. Most of them are nearly unpopulated. Texas is especially peculiar because it has something like 250 LITTLE counties, the same size as counties in Ohio or Virginia. Several of the Texas counties are exactly one ranch. A ranch doesn’t need a grocery store.
The other plains states partly adjusted to the Dry Line, merging some LITTLE counties into more proportional and supportable BIG counties. The states that are entirely west of the Dry Line are all BIG counties.
Here’s the county distinction on one clear map, in the context of religion and culture:
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I started looking for maps of growth among various denominations to see if my overall impression was still valid. For instance, are Mormons and Muslims starting to lose adherents as well? No, they’re not. But in scanning the maps I noticed something else that I hadn’t seen before. Take this map of growth among Muslims, from the 2010 US Religious Census….
Sure enough it shows growth, but all of these maps also bring out a distinct line between big counties and little counties. The line (which I drew in green) runs straight north and south. It agrees with the Kansas/Colo boundary, but cuts across other boundaries. It doesn’t agree with the relevant geographical line, either. The ‘dry line’ is the real E/W divider of climate and geography, and runs about 200 miles east of this county divider. I’ve always been a map freak; was reading and drawing maps before I was reading and writing text. I’ve always known that the western states have bigger counties than the eastern states, but for some reason this divider never grabbed my eyes before.
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In other words, the Brits are treating a county that consists of one ranch in the same statistical category as Los Angeles county or the Bronx.
Looking again at the map, another thing grabs my eye. Ponca lost all of its Muslims. What happened? Conoco moved its headquarters to Houston. Oil companies have quite a few Persian and Arab engineers and geologists.
Polistra's Mill 