US State Capitals by Proximity in 30 Seconds

In the state of Arkansas many counties have two county seats, especially counties which are divided by a river. In the spring when rivers were in flood, people could still get to one county seat to conduct business. Making the capitals in cities away from water makes sense from that point of view.

Some are meant to be central to the populations of their state at the time. Salem, OR, for instance is central to the Willamette Valley, putting it within a day's travel for the majority of Oregon's population, despite being several hundred miles from 2/3 of the state.

Indianapolis a major city too, but its always forgotten when people mention big cities in the US.

I can say the same thing about about Philly - but they aren’t the capital

A few state capitals started out as secondary cities and then became major cities. The best example of this is Atlanta, which was not the biggest city in Georgia when it was selected as a capital, but now is a major U.S. city.

Similarly, Columbus has grown in size over time and eclipsed the former bigger cities of Cleveland and Cincinnati.

True, or the biggest city of the state at the time.

Nope, by city proper it's exactly half, and by urban area it's still less than 30. Many others are in the top 5 (e.g. Santa Fe), and some are still major cities (e.g. Sacramento), but others are small towns (e.g. Frankfort) or, despite being relatively major, are still not one of the cities you'd think of when thinking about that state (e.g. Harrisburg).

Further on that point, I think part of the reason people think US capital cities tend to be small or obscure arises from the fact that many major cities nationally are not capitals. Part of the reason for this is that the big states tend to have many major cities, whereas some states have no major cities at all so even their largest is small by national standards. Cheyenne, Wyoming is the largest city in its state, but the whole state has only about a quarter of the metro populations of Sacramento or Austin, which despite both being large cities and capitals are nowhere near the biggest in their respective states. I think another factor is that in the big four states a (competitively) small city is capital, not the world-famous metropolis(es) - neither LA nor San Francisco get to be capital of California, neither Houston nor Dallas get to be capital of Texas, and both Miami and NYC miss out in Florida and New York. Yet among the Big 4's capitals, only Tallahassee is genuinely 'small'.

30 WPM? (15 states in 30 seconds)