At the time of America's revolution, there were a total of thirteen colonies, of which all of them were located on the east coast. When we fast forward to the present time, we find that when we look at the population density of the States of our Union, the top seven States by population density are all founding colony States, with the eighth ranking State being Florida. In fact, the lowest rated State of our original founding colonies is ranked #21 in population density (South Carolina). As of 2010, the population of the States that have some portion of their border on the Eastern seaboard was over 112 million, whereas the population of all the States that have some portion of their border on the Western seaboard was not quite 48 million.
These facts and statistics point to a couple of significant points such as at the inception of America, the Appalachian mountain range which originates in the southern part of Canada before ultimately terminating in central Alabama was a natural border that separated the colonists from other foreign empires such as France, as well as being separated from the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. It also means that originally to go west in America, meant to travel beyond the Appalachian mountain range to the regions lying just west of there, that was at the time, considered to be the frontier of America and the beginnings of its expansion. Another point to be made is although America is a country to which many people have traveled or moved from one destination to another, it is also a country that many people once coming here have subsequently established long and stable roots within a certain community and consequently that is why the States with the highest population density are and will continue to be those that were our original colonies.
There is, of course, another very important point to make about the United States of America, which makes it dynamically different than Europe, for instance, whereas Europe has many countries of different sizes and principalities, all on the same continent; North America, on the other hand, is essentially a continent that consists of just three big countries which are Canada, the USA, and Mexico. This means, in essence, that although we take it for granted that America runs from sea to shining sea, it could very easily have been a country surrounded by other nationalities and principalities, which, in fact, it once was.
We often wonder why it is that so much power and money seems to reside in certain locations such as the northeastern section of America. The answer to that question is fundamentally found in the fact that money, power, education, and opportunity abound there because the roots of those institutions are of long standing and of long lasting value, that passes from one generation to the next, to which some of those peoples can trace their heritage all the way back to the founding of this great nation and are proud to be part of the bedrock which represents America at its best.