| Years. | Approximate location by important towns. | Westward move- ment during preceding decade. |
| 1790 | 23 miles eats of Baltimore, Maryland | . . . . . |
| 1800 | 18 miles west of Baltimore, Maryland | 41 miles |
| 1810 | 40 miles northwest by west of Washington, Dist. of Columbia | 36" |
| 1820 | 16 miles north of Woodstock Virginia | 50" |
| 1830 | 19 miles west-southwest of Moorefield, West Virginia | 39" |
| 1840 | 16 miles south of Clarksburg, West Virginia | 50" |
| 1850 | 23 miles southeast of Parkersburg, West Virginia | 55" |
| 1860 | 20 miles south of Chillicothe, Ohio | 81" |
| 1870 | 48 miles east by north of Cincinnati, Ohio | 42" |
| 1880 | 8 miles west by south of Cincinnati, Ohio | 58" |
| 1890 | 20 miles east of Columbus, Indiana | 48" |
The official statements as to the center of population and as to the distribution of population in other respects, as will be shown, have been very carefully prepared by Mr. Henry Gannett, the able geographer of the tenth and eleventh censuses; but the statements have been made in various bulletins, and are here brought together in connected and compact form, with proper explanations.
It becomes interesting to know how the population of the country is distributed relative to what are recognized as drainage basins, which may be classified as the Atlantic Ocean, the Great Basin, and the Pacific Ocean. The classification of drainage areas under the first great division, that of the Atlantic Ocean, as a primary designation, has for its subsidiary divisions the New England coast, the Middle Atlantic coast, the South Atlantic coast, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico. The Great Basin, for subsidiary divisions, has Great Salt Lake and the Humboldt River. The Pacific Ocean basin consists, secondarily, of the Colorado River, the Sacramento River, the Klamath River, and the Columbia River and their several great tributaries. The percentage of the total population, distributed over these drainage areas or basins, at the last three censuses, has been as follows:
| Divisions. | 1890. | 1880. | 1870. |
| Atlantic Ocean | 96·2 | 97·1 | 97·8 |
| New England coast | 7·2 | 7·6 | 8·5 |
| Middle Atlantic coast | 18·3 | 19·2 | 20·8 |
| South Atlantic coast | 6·8 | 7·4 | 7·3 |
| Great Lakes | 11·2 | 10·7 | 11·0 |
| Gulf of Mexico | 52·7 | 52·2 | 50·2 |
| Great Basin | 0·4 | 0·4 | 0·3 |
| Pacific Ocean | 3·4 | 2·5 | 1·9 |
The table shows that more than ninety-six per cent of the inhabitants live in the country which is drained by the Atlantic Ocean; that more than one half of the population live in the region drained by the Gulf of Mexico, and that nearly forty-four per cent of the entire population of the country are congregated
