But, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins explains below, throughout the nation's history, neither of these numbers have stayed constant.

Not only did the population boom as a result of births and immigrants, but the borders of the country kept changing as well – especially in the country's early years as settlers moved westwards.

U.S. Population Density Over Time

Today's animated map, which comes to us from Vivid Maps, plots U.S. population density numbers over the time period of 1790-2010 based on U.S. Census data and Jonathan Schroeder's county-level decadal estimates for population. In essence, it gives a more precise view of who moved where and when over the course of the nation's history.