The 100th Meridian:

This split between the West and East United States can be shown between the 100th and 98th Meridians. These are the line on the globe or a map the split the world into slices.

An easy way to visualise the line whenever you see a map is to look for the tip of texas and make a somewhat straight line through it.

The line from the tip of Texas is the 98th Meridian, not the 100th Meridian. For our purposes its best to envision the 98th Meridian whenever seeing a map layer.

These blue dots are the major cities of the USA. From this layer, a major city has a population of more than 15,000. Most of these cities are located east of the line, with some populated spots in the west.

Some of those other areas are located in the states of Californina and Texas.

Using a different map to show the very biggest and most important cities, you can see that the ones in the west, including Dallas, Houston, L.A, and San Fransico, are mostly located in California and Texas.

This layer gives the population of the USA states. The USA west of the line has a population of 116,070,000 and 68,680,000 (over half) of that population lives in Texas and California.

The population of the east is two times bigger than the west with 211,510,000 people more spread out along the east coast.

This the light pollution of the USA during the night time. The closer to red on the roygbiv scale the brighter the light. The gray indicates a very low level of light in the night sky.

Most of the light pollution is occurring in the east, with the west light pollution happening in the same four cities from before. That very bright spot in the north is a fracking area.

Here is the light pollution shown in real images along with the major cities of the USA.

The white is light coming from the cities in the nighttime. They correspond with the cities.

These are the major sports stadiums of the U.S. with the previous major cities layer.

There are many overlaps between city clusters and major sports stadiums.

Most of the major sports stadiums in the west are located in California, Texas, and in clusters around areas with lakes, so areas that have access to larger amounts of water.

These are the hotspots of the major cities of the USA.

Most of the east is highlighted while only California, Texas and some other parts of the west are highlighted.

Why are there so so many more people in the east?

One reason for this might be the land avaiable on each side.

The land on the west is comprised of mostly rangeland and the east has a lot more tree land cover.

These are the climate zones of the USA. The east display the climates zones of "Humid Subtropical" and "Humid Continental". These indicate warmer temperatures that stay humid and can support more farmland which can then support more people.

The west displays climates zones such as "Hot Desert" and "Cold Desert" which are less sutible to support human agriculture, so there will be less people in general exept for the large cities.