This Is The Smallest Big City In America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 2, 12:01PM EDT

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This Is The Smallest Big City In America — © ehughes / iStock via Getty Images

The U.S. Census has several official terms to designate cities, towns, and smaller places in America. These terms are metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), consolidated metropolitan statistical areas (CMSAs), and primary metropolitan statistical areas (PMSAs), and “core-based statistical areas” (CBSA). Those with the largest populations are MSAs, and there are 385 of them in the US and another eight in Puerto Rico.

The largest of the MSAs is designated the New York City-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA MSA with a 2019 population of 19,216,182. An MSA can cover several states as New York City does. It is followed by the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA MSA with a population of 13,214,799. That is followed by the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI MSA with a population of 9,458,539.

The smallest MSA in the United States is the Carson City, NV MSA which has a population of 55,916. It is one of only 31 MSAs with populations below 100,000.

Named after legendary mountain man Kit Carson, Carson City has been the capital of Nevada since 1864, when Nevada became a capital. It is on the east side of Lake Tahoe, near the California border and south of Reno.

Carson City is one of 144 cities that could lose its MSA status based on the 2020 Census. Its population has barely changed since the 2010 Census.

Just over 66% of Carson City’s population is White. Another 25% is Hispanic/Latino. The median value of a home is $273,800, about the same as for the entire country. Carson City has 22,755 households, and 2.31 residents per household.

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Eighty-seven percent of the people over 25 in Carson City have graduated high school. A total of 22.2% of those over 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher. The median household income of Carson City is $55,718, about $10,000 below that national average. The poverty rate of 12.2% is slightly higher.

Of course, if the Census cuts a large number of MSAs from the current list, Carson City won’t even be a city anymore.

Click here to read These Are America’s Best Cities To Live

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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.