The chart above shows the miles of waterways per square mile of land in US states. Louisiana has the greatest waterway to land ratio of any US state.
Findings
- The difference between the state with the greatest waterway coverage, Louisiana, and the state with the least, South Dakota, is 0.05 miles.
- Louisiana has 51.90 times the waterway coverage that South Dakota does.
- Only Louisiana has more than 0.05 miles of waterways for every square mile of land.
Caveats
- Waterway data is from 2013.
- Area data is from 2010.
- Waterway and area data come from different sources.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest thousandth.
- Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming did not have any waterway data.
Details
Although Northeastern states do not have a lot of waterways, some Northeastern states rank really high in waterway coverage due to their small size.
The United States as a whole has 0.011 miles of waterways for every square mile of land ranking it just under Georgia and just above Ohio.
Sources
United States Census Bureau. "Annual Estimates of the Resident Population: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2016." Accessed December 12, 2017. http://factfinder2.census.gov.
United States Department of Transportation. 2015. "State Transportation by the Numbers." Accessed March 21, 2018. https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/legacy/_entire.pdf.