Growing of America

Las Vegas is said to be the fastest growing city in the United States. With that in mind it was just a couple months ago that it was that the United States reached a population of 300 million people.

Something I’ve seen people point out, talk about, and have seen for myself in many of the tows I’ve stayed in is growth. New subdivisions are being built in all directions, new malls, new shopping centers, and everything between. In so many towns people have showed an expression of shock by how much their town has grown. Older folks who have lived in the town for decades pointed out where the edge of town used to be. Carl mentioned to me that where we’re staying in town used to be open land. I’ve seen towns where the city has spread out right to the edge of farms and ranches.

Another aspect I’ve seen is all the retrofitting that goes on. I stayed with a restaurant owner in San Luis Obispo and learned about how he was losing his original restaurant because of the retrofitting raising the cost of taxes. It’s a changing county. In the last ten years there has been in an increase of 35 million people in the country. To put that in perspective, that’s the population of California (or about four New York Cities) dispersed throughout the entire country. Imagine a million more people in your home state in that span. It’s a lot of people. And speaking of California, that’s where I’ve seen a lot of the growth. California is over 1/10 of the U.S. population. If you break that down that’s basically in between San Francisco and San Diego all along the coast.