Thank you all for your suggestions and additional thoughtful questions! Colleagues here at Berkeley turned up a promising github project: ( https://github.com/cbgoodman/muni-incorporation/blob/master/README.md) and also told me about the Census Bureau's survey of governments which at least sometimes asks about incorporation date (take a look at the Census of Governments, the questionnaire from 2012 includes a question that asks for the year when the county or city government was formed. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/gus/technical-documentation/questionnaires/2012-gus.pdf). However, unfortunately the public use data files for the census of government organizations do not include a date of incorporation for the cities/townships: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/gus/data/orgpublicusefiles.All.List_1216629514.html So far it seems like the Github project is the most promising. I'll keep you all informed if anything else turns up, though :) Have a great weekend, and thank you again! Susan On Fri, Feb 3, 2023 at 2:54 AM Nat Case <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Many individual states have date of incorporation (different from > "founding" in a settlement sense, but there you are) in datasets of > incorporated areas, both tabular and geodata-based. > > Date of settlement is a little fuzzier: date of first recorded human > settlement? first non-indigenous settlement (the landmark of record in a > lot of older sources)? establishment of a church or post office or store? > And incorporation is a little confusing because merging of cities, change > in status of incorporated area (village vs city in Wisconsin, for example), > and other quirks of sub-state organization may get in the way. Was New York > City incorporated in 1653, the date of its charter, or 1898, when the new > City of New York was formed from multiple older municipalities, including > the old City of New York? > > Nat Case > INCase, LLC > Minneapolis, MN USA > 612-702-1333 > > On 2/2/23 2:53 PM, Susan Powell wrote: > > Hello all, > I received a question from a researcher looking for a "dataset of all the > towns in the USA and the dates they were founded." > > The first thing that came to my mind were gazetteers, but none of the > digital/data-based once I looked at included dates. > > There are a few book gazetteers I found that appear to have founding date > information: > Historical Gazetteer of the United States by Paul T. Hellmann (not > comprehensive) > American places dictionary : a guide to 45,000 populated places, natural > features, and other places in the United States ... in four volumes by > Abate, Frank R. > Omni gazetteer of the United States of America, by Abate, Frank S > > The researcher mentioned a Census dataset that costs money. > > Does anyone know of something like this that's available in dataset form? > Many thanks! > Susan > > -- > Susan Powell > GIS & Map Librarian > UC Berkeley > [log in to unmask] > pronouns: she/her/hers > > -- Susan Powell GIS & Map Librarian UC Berkeley [log in to unmask] pronouns: she/her/hers