While the heyday of the canals lasted only a few decades, they transformed the American economy by connecting the areas west of the Appalachian Mountains to eastern population centers and Atlantic ports. Concentrated largely north of the Mason-Dixon line, they shaped American regionalism too by linking the northeast and northwest together into a region that increasingly came to see itself as the "North."

The most democratic body in the federal government, hundreds of representatives for the House are elected every other year. This site maps elections from before the Civil War until today showing changing patterns across regions and between urban and rural areas.

No sitting American president traveled outside the country before Theodore Roosevelt traveled to Panama in 1906 to see the construction of the Panama Canal. A century later Air Force One regularly carries the head of the executive branch to all corners of the world. The Executive Abroad maps the international trips of presidents and secretaries of state.

The decades between the banning of the international slave trade in 1808 and the abolition of slavery during the Civil War saw the massive and harrowing relocation of approximately 850,000 enslaved men, women, and children. While some enslaved people were moved when their owners relocated to the western frontier, about two-thirds were bought and sold in America’s slave market. They were forcibly uprooted from their homes, separated from their loved ones, and marched and shipped across the South on railroads and steamships.

At all points in its history, a significant proportion of the population of the United States had been born in other countries and regions. This being the case, American history can never be understood by just looking within its borders. The culture and politics of the US have always been profoundly shaped by the material and emotional ties many of its residents have had to the places where they were born. This map will allow you to begin to explore those connections at the basic level of demographic statistics.

Like so many other government agencies during the New Deal, HOLC and its parent bureau, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, shaped Americans' lives and livelihoods profoundly during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both proved critical to protecting and expanding home ownership, to standardizing lending practices, and to encouraging residential and commercial real estate investment in a flagging economy. Across the middle third of the twentieth century, arguably the most prosperous decades in American history, these agencies worked with public and private sector partners to create millions of jobs and help millions of Americans buy or keep their homes. At the very same time, federal housing programs helped codify and expand practices of racial and class segregation. They ensured, moreover, that rampant real estate speculation and environmental degradation would accompany America's remarkable economic recovery and growth.

During the 1840s tens of thousands of American migrants made long journeys through the American West seeking land in Oregon, gold in California, and religious liberty in Utah.

For a quarter century, the federal government provided funding for cities large and small to raze "blighted" or "slum" neighborhoods. Though improved housing opportunities was the ostensible goal, over time, cities used federal funds to stimulate commercial and industrial redevelopment. Through these programs, cities displaced hundreds of thousands of families from their homes and neighborhoods. Renewing Inequality visualizes those displacements and urban renewal more generally.