This Minnesota County Could Hold 70% of South Dakota’s Population
South Dakota is a large state when it comes to land mass. At 77,116 square miles, South Dakota is the 17th largest state in the US. Anyone who has driven from Sioux Falls to the Black Hills will find out five and half hours later just how large the state is.
But when it comes to population, even though the state is growing, South Dakota comes in as the 5th least populous. Only North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming are smaller. Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I like South Dakota because it is sparsely populated. Even Sioux Falls with its 281,958 metro population is relatively small when you compare it to other cities, but that is ok.
So now we have South Dakota's population size in perspective, what is that one Minnesota county that is 30% larger than South Dakota? Of course, it's Hennepin County where you will find Minneapolis. With a population of 1,270,730, Hennepin could hold all of South Dakota's population and still have room left over to fit in Wichita, Kansas.
That's a lot of people squeezed into one county.
Then if you go east across the Mississippi River into Ramsey County, home of Minnesota's Capital St. Paul, you'll find another 554,000 people in that county. That's about 60% of South Dakota's population.
With a total state-wide population of 5,707,390, Minnesota is six times larger than South Dakota with its 895,376 population. When it comes to land mass, South Dakota is large, but Minnesota is just a little larger at 86,935 square miles.
Facts and figures from Wikipedia.