At the end of the eighteenth century the population of the Western country was about as great as the population of the State of Washington at the end of the nineteenth, and Washington is distinctly a pastoral and agricultural State, a State of men who chop trees, herd cattle, and till the soil, as well as trade; but in Washington great cities, like Tacoma, Seattle, and Spokane, have sprung up with a rapidity which was utterly unknown in the West a century ago.
Nowadays when new States are formed the urban population in them tends to grow as rapidly as in the old.

A hundred years ago there was practically no urban population at all in a new country.

Colorado even during its first decade of statehood had a third of its population in its capital city.

Kentucky during its first decade did not have much more than one per cent of its population in its capital city.

Kentucky grew as rapidly as Colorado grew, a hundred years later; but Denver grew thirty or forty times as fast as Lexington had ever grown.
Restlessness of the Frontiersman.