U.S. Census Office, The Predominating Sex: 1890 (1898)

This choropleth map, published in the 1890 Statistical Atlas of the United States under the direction of Henry Gannett, illustrates the distribution of the predominating sex across the United States in 1890. The map’s shading corresponds to the percentage by which one sex predominated in each area. For example, lighter pink shading indicates areas where females were more numerous, while lighter orange shading represents areas where males exceeded females by less than five percent. Along the East Coast—particularly in the District of Columbia and Massachusetts—females outnumbered males. In contrast, males predominated across much of the rest of the country. As Gannett observed, “In the central and western parts of the country, indeed in over nine-tenths of its area, males are in excess, and that excess reaches its maximum in the far west, where population is sparse and where the stage of settlement and the industries are such as to discourage the presence of women and children” (p. 17).