National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 17.0

The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) provides free online access to summary statistics and GIS boundary files for U.S. censuses and other nationwide surveys from 1790 through the present. GIS files include: counties and states since 1790, census tracts since 1910, metropolitan areas since 1950, place and county subdivision boundaries since 1980, place points since 1900, all standard census reporting areas since 1990, centers of population for four geographic levels since 2000, and SABINS school attendance areas for 2009-12. Summary tables from decennial censuses and the American Community Survey include county and state tables since 1790; census tract tables since 1910; and tables for all original census summary levels, down to census blocks, since 1970. Additional summary tables include County Business Patterns data (annual, 1970-2002), vital statistics for counties and states (births and deaths: annual, 1915-2007; marriages and divorces: selected years, 1867-2010), agricultural census data (1840-1950), religious bodies data (1850-1952), manufacturing census data (1840-1940), and 2010 census data for SABINS school attendance areas. NHGIS also includes time series tables providing comparable statistics from multiple source years with standardized categories and geography; geographic crosswalks summarizing associations between 1990-2020 census geographic units; environmental summaries describing climate characteristics by county and land cover by county and census tract; and privacy-protected demonstration data that link original 2010 census summary data with data derived from trial runs of the Census Bureau’s new 2020 Disclosure Avoidance System applied to 2010 Census responses. NHGIS data are available through an online access system and API and are offered free of charge to registered users at https://nhgis.org.