Does anyone know of a better way to extract the data from the Census
bureau's Census Gazetteer files what county populations were for a given
census?
Case in point, in fixing broken links on a site I've inherited there was a
blurb about the county population in 1990 - yes I know I can go to a newer
census but likely the same problem exists there.
Going to
https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/gazeteer1990.html one is
presented with download the National counties Gazetteer file - 113K. I did
this but even 'knowing' what the columns are and using Notepad to continue
to extend the width of the data across two screens which I know is more
than 141 columns, I still get non straight text to be able to pick out the
data.
Had the blurb about the URL on the web site not stated the population of
the county was x in 1990, I would still be wondering what all the jibberish
attached to the county - because with the wrap around I couldn't tell if
the data was before or after the county name.
Insight please?
Tim