I’m not aware of that dataset already existing – but I wonder if your researcher could query from Wikidata? It certainly wouldn’t be complete but is away to start compiling the dataset.

 

Two ways pop to mind:

  1. They could form a query that pulls location name, date of founding (in Wikidata “inception”), and the coordinate location. The researcher would need to look around to see the different “instances of” for locations that they would want included in the query – these might be “city in the United Sates,” “village in the United States,” “town in the United States,” etc.

 

A quick and dirty query that lists date of inception and coordinates, only pulling locations listed as in Wikidata as a “city in the United Sates”: https://w.wiki/6Hum I’m sure someone with actual SPARQL capabilities could create a better query.

 

  1. Locations in Wikidata often include their GeoNames ID, so the researcher could query Wikidata for date of founding and GeoNames ID then merge with the GeoNames dataset for lat/long and all their other data.

 

Either way would take time and cleanup.

 

Sierra Laddusaw
(she/her)

Associate Librarian | Scholarly Communication Librarian
Boreham Library
University of Arkansas - Fort Smith

479.788.7217 | [log in to unmask]

 

 

 

 

From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Susan Powell
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2023 2:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: dataset of US towns including when they were founded

 

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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

pronouns: she/her/hers