This Is America’s Largest State Capital

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 29, 9:30AM EDT

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This Is America’s Largest State Capital — © lavi37 / Getty Images

Sometimes, a state’s capital is also its largest city. Boston and Indianapolis are good examples. Yet, such cases are rare. More often, state capitals are not the largest in the state by population. Often, they are obscure cities for people who live outside these states. How many people know that Lansing is the capital of Michigan? Shouldn’t the decision have been to locate the capital in Detroit?

In the book “American Capitals: A Historical Geography,” author Christian Montès points out that capitals were often picked by state legislatures, but some were chosen by governors or popular votes.

Another notable fact about state capitals is how few are named after people. There are a small number of exceptions, like Washington, D.C., and Lincoln, Nebraska.

24/7 Wall St. looked at all 50 state capitals based on population. Only one is among America’s top 10 cities by total population. Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, has a population of 1.7 million. It is the only state capital in the United States with more than a million residents. Phoenix became a city in 1881, before Arizona became a state in 1912.
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Some state capitals are usually small. Montpelier, Vermont, has a population of less than 8,000. Pierre, South Dakota, has fewer than 14,000 people, and the population of Augusta, Maine, is less than 20,000.

These are the 20 largest state capitals based on population in 2020:

Phoenix, Ariz. (1,703,080)
Austin, Texas (988,218)
Columbus, Ohio (922,223
Indianapolis, Ind. (875,929)
Denver, Colo. (734,134)
Boston, Mass. (710,195)
Nashville, Tenn. (673,167)
Oklahoma City, Ok. (655,407)
Atlanta, Ga. (523,738)
Sacramento, Calif. (521,769)
Raleigh, N.C. (481,958)
Honolulu, Hawaii (342,933)
Saint Paul, Minn. (307,695)
Lincoln, Neb. (293,905)
Madison, Wis. (264,030)
Boise, Idaho (234,576)
Richmond, Va. (232,055)
Des Moines, Iowa (217,891)
Baton Rouge, La. (216,701)
Salt Lake City, Utah (213,367)

Click here to see which U.S. cities are the most miserable, according to their residents.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.