100 Biggest US Cities in 1900

Name the 100 most populous "urban places" according to the US Bureau of the Census in the year 1900.

Honolulu is not included as Hawaii was not yet a state.

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Last updated: September 15, 2019

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First submitted	May 27, 2014
Times taken	47,942
Average score	38.0%
Rating	4.39

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Population	City
3,437,202	New York
1,698,575	Chicago
1,293,697	Philadelphia
575,238	St Louis
560,892	Boston
508,957	Baltimore
381,768	Cleveland
352,387	Buffalo
342,782	San Francisco
325,902	Cincinnati
321,616	Pittsburgh
287,104	New Orleans
285,704	Detroit
285,315	Milwaukee
278,718	Washington, DC
246,070	Newark
206,433	Jersey City
204,731	Louisville
202,718	Minneapolis
175,597	Providence
169,164	Indianapolis
163,752	Kansas City, MO
163,065	St Paul
162,608	Rochester
133,859	Denver
131,822	Toledo
129,896	Allegheny
125,560	Columbus
118,421	Worcester
108,374	Syracuse
108,027	New Haven
105,171	Paterson
104,863	Fall River
102,979	St Joseph

Population	City
102,555	Omaha
102,479	Los Angeles
102,320	Memphis
102,026	Scranton
94,969	Lowell
94,151	Albany
91,886	Cambridge
90,426	Portland, OR
89,872	Atlanta
87,565	Grand Rapids
85,333	Dayton
85,050	Richmond
80,865	Nashville
80,671	Seattle
79,850	Hartford
78,961	Reading
76,508	Wilmington
75,935	Camden
73,307	Trenton
70,996	Bridgeport
68,513	Lynn
66,960	Oakland
62,559	Lawrence
62,442	New Bedford
62,139	Des Moines
62,059	Springfield, MA
61,643	Somerville
60,651	Troy
59,364	Hoboken
59,007	Evansville
56,987	Manchester
56,383	Utica
56,100	Peoria

Population	City
55,807	Charleston
54,244	Savannah
53,531	Salt Lake City
53,321	San Antonio
52,969	Duluth
52,733	Erie
52,130	Elizabeth
51,721	Wilkes-Barre
51,418	Kansas City, KS
50,167	Harrisburg
50,145	Portland, ME
47,931	Yonkers
46,624	Norfolk
45,859	Waterbury
45,712	Holyoke
45,115	Ft Wayne
44,885	Youngstown
44,633	Houston
42,938	Covington
42,728	Akron
42,638	Dallas
42,345	Saginaw
41,459	Lancaster
40,169	Lincoln
40,063	Brockton
39,647	Binghamton
39,441	Augusta
39,231	Pawtucket
38,973	Altoona
38,878	Wheeling
38,469	Mobile
38,415	Birmingham
38,307	Little Rock

Level 83

May 27, 2014

What do you guys think? Would this be better or worse if I cut it in half and made it the top 50 cities?

+21

Level 78

May 28, 2014

I'm alright with a top 100. Would be boring if you only had to guess the usual suspects.

+12

Level 46

May 29, 2014

I prefer the top 100; it makes it more challenging.

Level 48

Jul 25, 2014

I think top 50 would work. For top 100 there is a lot of cities to go think about.

+10

Level 37

Jul 29, 2014

I really dug that it was all 100, a great history lesson, but just give us 3 or 4 more minutes. Tough quiz. But good.

Level 29

Dec 20, 2015

Then my home city wouldn't be on here! (The population of it now is over a million)

Level 54

Jul 2, 2021

Must be from Phoenix!

Level 63

Jun 16, 2022

or from San Jose

Level 73

Feb 28, 2017

I could use a couple more minutes - I keep hitting around 60 total. I think I could hit 80 with a few more ticks on the clock.

Level 83

Feb 28, 2017

I made this quiz and my high score is 68. But that's enough to get 5/5 points.

Level 73

Jun 24, 2018

Looks like I tied your score back when I first took it. I was still coming up with correct answers through the end of the time allotment, so of course I wanted to add a few more ticks to the clock!

Level 65

Feb 28, 2017

Keep it. Utica doesn't make it many lists...

Level 70

May 30, 2017

Great quiz! I think it's fine at 100. I didn't think I could get them all but ended up with 69. Another minute or two and I might have reached 75/80. All thumbs.

Level 28

Mar 27, 2018

I think I'd like a top fifty better, especially since there weren't that many big cities back then and so you're scraping the bottom of the urban barrel to find things (some of which I guessed and others I would never have even dreamed of thinking of).

Level 89

May 27, 2014

Great quiz. Really shows how much the US population has shifted.

Level 83

Jun 8, 2014

It does! :) Many of these cities of course have increased dramatically in population. Dallas has 100x more people now. But the ones that are most often missed have often gotten smaller in the last 100 years. Holyoke, for one example, has 5,000 fewer inhabitants today than it did in 1900.

Level 83

Jun 8, 2014

and, actually, it has been absorbed into the Springfield, MA metro area so wouldn't even be counted today.

Level 90

Jun 22, 2014

St Louis has lost over 250,000 people since 1900. Also Pittsburgh, which shortly after 1900 annexed Allegheny, has lost 150,000. Buffalo and Cincinnati are also much smaller now.

Level 48

Jul 25, 2014

This quiz was very interesting to me. In 1900 this is after the westward expansion boom and the east coast cities we gaining back the population they lost in the mid 1800s. It goes to show how much things like city populations can change in just a short amount of time. If anyone would look at the populations of the same cities a decade later, the amount of people in the cities and the size of the cities will be hugely different in just a short 10 years.

Level 75

Oct 27, 2019

The city of St. Louis has set boundaries. As people moved to adjoining St. Louis County and surrounding suburbs, the city could not annex them. Today, the region shows mostly slow to moderate growth, depending on which areas are included in the studies, but the city itself continues to lose population.

Level 88

Dec 30, 2019

St. Louis boomed to 850,000 by 1950. It's lost almost 2/3 of its population since. Detroit 1,850,000 down to 670,000. Youngstown 170,000 down to 60,000. Many more have dived hard with U.S. industry.

Level 56

May 29, 2014

Great quiz. Could have used more time.

Level 85

Jul 25, 2014

Was NC a desert at that time?

Level 83

Jul 25, 2014

In the 19th century even the antebellum South when it was thriving could never match the northern states for their cities. The south was much more rural and less industrialized and therefore fewer people lived in cities there. In addition, by 1900, 35 years after the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction had repaired some of the damage done to the urban centers of these states but they were also starting basically from scratch in many places.

Level 37

Jul 29, 2014

Among Southern states, NC never had a good port city. There was Norfolk/Portsmouth, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans by comparison. And they never had factories either to compare with Richmond, Birmingham, Columbus. NC, like Mississippi, remained stagnant after Reconstruction and through the Jim Crow era. They didn't start to industrialize the Tobacco Road cities until the 10s and 20s.

Level 52

Sep 27, 2016

seriously? you couldnt be more wrong lmao.

lets take a look at Wilmington, one of the best deep water ports along the east coast through much of the united states history. massive shipbuilding hub during ww2, over 240 ships built there. still a huge international shipping destination today.

Level 26

Mar 19, 2023

key word pal: he said "HAD" . he is correct that NC didn't have a major city Wilmington had less than 20k people in 1900. next time think before you type little buddy

Level 68

Jul 25, 2014

"Pittsburg" should be accepted as that was the official spelling of the city in 1900.

Level 90

Jul 29, 2014

Had to look that one up, you do have a point.

Level 83

Jul 29, 2014

I fixed it already. Thanks.

Level 64

Mar 6, 2016

Only for 20 years by the federal government. Most people refused to alter the spelling and they had to reverse the decision.

Level 70

Aug 2, 2014

great quiz! Keep it as it is. it's more challenging. - my 2 cents : )

Level 46

Nov 9, 2014

One of the best quizzes I have taken!!!

Level 83

Nov 9, 2014

Thanks. glad you liked it.

Level 75

Feb 9, 2015

How about a "Countries of the World in 1900" quiz?

Level 83

Feb 9, 2015

There are Most populous countries in 1900 and 1950 quizzes already. I made the latter. Since many modern countries were part of European empires in 1900, that quiz covers most of the world with just a top 20 list.

Level 83

Feb 9, 2015

Oh wait. here you go

Killitquick already did it.

Level 64

Jul 13, 2015

Killit quick? This quiz, kalbahamut, is for you!

Level 83

Sep 4, 2016

I always just assumed that killit was typing his name when a spider crawled across his keyboard and he didn't get it quite right on account of panic-induced typos.

Level 55

Oct 5, 2020

Maybe when the spider crawled across the keyboard they wanted to shout "kill it quick" but accidentally typed it into their JetPunk username and the spider messed up the letters as they typed it in

Level 62

Feb 2, 2015

It's weird having moved from California to the Northeast. The city I'm currently living in has 20k fewer people now than it did in 1900. That just doesn't happen back home.

Level 88

Dec 30, 2019

You rarely find the crowded and compact streets out West in cities that you find in virtually every small Northeastern town either. It's like a late model Europe.

Level 64

Oct 11, 2015

Hey, this has been made. You know, "Biggest US Cities in 1900". The only difference is that this is 100, and the other is 50. More points for me! :)

Level 83

Oct 11, 2015

I think I made the same discovery in the comments above.

Level 37

Oct 12, 2015

So Florida was not representing in 1900

Level 69

Jul 5, 2021

Air conditioning was invented in 1902. I'm thinking that Florida would have far less appeal without it.

Level 72

Dec 9, 2015

Excited to see that it's Troy, NY, which is what I had in mind when I tried it

Level 64

Mar 6, 2016

It definitely helps that I'm from Pennsylvania. I wouldn't mind a reduction because I frankly don't expect anybody from outside the state to know a place like Altoona even exists.

Level 45

Jan 17, 2017

I'm also from Pennsylvania, and I barely know where Altoona is!

Level 28

Mar 27, 2018

I got Altoona but not Allegheny...

Level 67

Mar 24, 2016

52/100 and 4/5 points. I'm happy with that, I'll never get 100 anyway and all for one extra point! Got some 3%ers but then missed off some like Portland, Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis. Not bad for an Englishman anyway.

Level 83

Mar 29, 2016

Not bad at all. My high score is 63 and I made the quiz.

Level 35

Jun 5, 2016

Biggest one I missed is Rochester at 162,608, which in 2016 is only modestly larger than that at 210k.

Level 77

Jul 3, 2016

Took it twice 2 years ago with 34-35/100. Now got 52. Practising with the modern 200 biggest cities one certainly paid off. Still forgot Atlanta and Salt Lake City.

Level 80

Jul 8, 2016

Being from Massachusetts helps. I got most of the low percentage New England and NY cities. All those old mill towns and industrial centers.

Level 37

Aug 11, 2016

This is one of the most interesting quizzes on the site, so many northern cities I didn't expect to be here!

Level 66

Nov 12, 2016

I would never have guessed Pawtucket, even though I once lived there. Mill town, so I should have, perhaps.

Level 68

Nov 28, 2016

A lot of Massachusetts area ones here

Level 83

Nov 28, 2016

Not so surprising. Boston was one of the top 5 urban centers in the country at the time and among the 3 oldest giving the surrounding areas ample time to grow in to population centers in their own right.

Level 52

Jan 1, 2017

I can't believe Lancaster was on here. The city isn't that big when I visited there. Rochester and Duluth were that big too?

Level 83

Feb 28, 2017

If New York is "the city that never sleeps," I think Rochester should be "the city that goes to bed early." I was there once, twenty years ago, for a convention. I remember thinking it was odd mostly because it seemed like a fairly large city, and yet everything closed by around 6 p.m. After that it was difficult even finding a place to deliver pizza to our hotel.

Level 47

Feb 28, 2017

I wouldn't have thought that Salt Lake City was in the top 100, let alone as far up as it is, in 1900. Considering it was only settled 53 years prior.

Level 83

Feb 28, 2017

Mormons multiply quickly

Level 58

Feb 28, 2017

Covington? Wow!

Level 46

Feb 28, 2017

i cheated a little

Level 69

Feb 28, 2017

It would be really helpful to have the states that these cities are in listed in the answers. The major ones I know, but not the more obscure ones.

Level 68

Mar 1, 2017

Got 32, should have got a few more. The only US place I've been is Los Angeles on a stopover for 2 days when I was 8. Will travel there one day. Interesting quiz, thanks.

Level 65

Mar 2, 2017

I was surprised when certain east coast cities were on there, like Scranton, Erie, and Jersey City, while I was surprised that certain west coast cities weren't, like San Diego and Phoenix. I guess this says a lot about migration patterns in the last century.

Level 45

Mar 10, 2017

I was confused by "urban places"... for instance I didn't list Hoboken, because I considered that part of the NYC metro area. Very interesting!

Level 73

Mar 30, 2017

New England all over this superb quiz.

Level 67

Oct 3, 2017

I you know the Mill towns in New England, you can do well on this quiz.

Level 55

Jun 30, 2018

48/100. Not bad for a Brit.

Level 72

Sep 12, 2018

70/100 but i forgot Washington

Level 88

Apr 27, 2019

The source may say "urban places", which is a common reference for population on JetPunk, but this is most definitely city limits populations.

Level 83

Apr 29, 2019

How do you know?

Level 69

Oct 27, 2019

Clear from the population of New York and other top cities, and the fact that many of these lie in urban areas of others.

Level 88

Oct 28, 2019

Simple U.S. Census Bureau statistics. They are for city limits.

Also, as Wishy Washy said it includes suburbs 3 feet from the downtown of other cities, so it's obviously not the total urban area.

Level 65

Oct 27, 2019

Quite surprised the average is that low at 37%.

Level 69

Oct 27, 2019

Scored 67 out of 100 but could have gotten another 15-20 with more time. Would be great to have a few more minutes on this quiz to really let people scrape as much knowledge as they can.

Level 67

Oct 27, 2019

Growing up in New York and going to school in New England helped immensely.

Level 70

Oct 27, 2019

Just a bit over 100 years ago, Scranton was the same size as LA, and was larger than Dallas and Houston combined. Just let that sink in for a second.

Level 88

Dec 30, 2019

Back when paper meant something.

Level 28

Oct 28, 2019

"Honolulu is not included as Hawaii was not yet a state." Why does that matter? Did the census not go to the territories?

Level 83

Oct 28, 2019

It wasn't a US city at the time. I'm not sure if they collected census data there or not... I don't remember if it was in the data and I chose to exclude it or if it wasn't in the data but I think the latter.

Level 52

Oct 28, 2019

Great quiz. I am originally from New England, so just started naming every town I could think of in those states and New York. That helped!

Level 80

Oct 29, 2019

Was curious if Manila or Havana would make it

Level 83

Dec 30, 2019

Manila definitely would have. In 1900 they had a population around 200-300k. Not sure about Havana, but probably. Havana was booming by the early 1900s.

Level 33

Oct 28, 2020

I was right to approach this as a "what were the largest cities in NY, MA, PA & OH?" quiz ;)

Level 65

Dec 18, 2020

I feel like I wouldn't have done half as well on this quiz if I didn't live in New England.

Level 57

May 25, 2022

Once I got Holyoke Mass I realized I should just be guessing random small cities in New England

Level 83

May 25, 2022

after getting the bigger cities that is in fact a good strategy.

Level 46

Jan 9, 2021

Kalbahamut, does the population include slaves?

Level 83

Jan 9, 2021

In 1900? There were no slaves in the United States in 1900. The Civil War ended and 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865.

Level 46

Jan 9, 2021

Also, what about cities like Brooklyn and Queens

Level 74

Mar 13, 2021

Brooklyn and Queens became part of New York in 1898 and are thus included in it's figure

Level 28

Jul 2, 2021

https://www.biggestuscities.com/1900

he pretty much got his entire list from this website.

Level 83

Jul 2, 2021

Awesome detective work!

I actually didn't.. but.. it's probable that this list and the quiz both got their information from the same source. Which, while mysteriously escaping your master sleuthing skills, is listed at the top of the page.

Level 66

Jul 2, 2021

Makes me laugh to see that, back in the day, Saginaw was basically the same size as Dallas.

Level 62

Jul 2, 2021

Got that one - only thanks to Simon & Garfunkel!

Level 57

Nov 10, 2021

I missed Atlanta. I feel so stupid.

Level 63

Mar 18, 2022

How did I miss Chicago...

Level 89

Jul 20, 2022

I think I need two or three more minutes on this one.

Level 88

Sep 29, 2023

Yeah, it's just another speed typing test. Better to just click "Untimed" and actually test your knowledge, not how frantic you want to be.

Level 73

Apr 12, 2023

Great quiz. leave it like it is top 100. Although I can only manage a high score of 84/100

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