Using the geodata library

Download geodata for United States geographies from 1790 to 2019 as shapefiles or in other formats from our Geodata library. Social Explorer’s geodata library consists of a large collection of coastline clipped versions of U.S. geographies. These high-resolution shapefiles, which include detailed coastlines for a wide variety of geographic levels covering the entire United States geography, were created using the TIGER/Line and AREAWATER shapefiles from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Search the Geodata library by collection

  1. Log in to your Social Explorer account and click on the Geodata tab in the left-hand side panel of your dashboard, or click here if you are already logged in.
  2. Explore the Geodata library by our collections, sorted into different levels of geography. Click on a collection, U.S. County 1790 – 2019  for example, or type your desired geography into the search bar.
  3. Choose the year for which you’d like to download a U.S. county shapefile and click on the button next to the title of the file to download.

Click on the filename to get more information about the file such as an abstract from the U.S. Census Bureau on the original files, purpose of use, use constraints, sample data, etc.

Search the Geodata library by all datasets

  1. Scroll down to the bottom of the list of collections and click on Search datasets or click here.

  2. Type your desired geography into the search bar.

  3. Choose from the results the year for which you’d like to download and click on the  button next to the title of the file to download.