US States Boundaries — GeoJSON Download (50 States + Territories)
Quick answer: This page hosts all 56 US states and territories as a single public-domain GeoJSON FeatureCollection you can preview on a map and download in one click, with shapeName and shapeISO fields ready for joining your own data.
About this dataset
All 56 US states, territories, and the District of Columbia as one hosted GeoJSON — map it instantly, join your own data on shapeISO, or download it in one click.
Download US state boundaries as GeoJSON: 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories in a single FeatureCollection. Each feature carries shapeName (Mississippi, North Carolina, …), shapeISO (US-MS), a stable shapeID, and the shapeGroup and shapeType fields, so joining your own CSV or spreadsheet data is a one-column lookup on US-NY, US-CA, or US-TX. Geometry is simplified to roughly a 1 km tolerance from the US Census Bureau MAF/TIGER source, which keeps every state intact — including the multipolygons for Alaska, Hawaii, and Michigan — while cutting the file to under half a megabyte. The preview map on this page renders the same file that the download button serves.
Data source: US Census Bureau MAF/TIGER Database via geoBoundaries
How to download
- 1 Check the preview map above — it loads the exact file the download button serves.
- 2 Download the GeoJSON and open it in QGIS, ArcGIS, or GeoDataViewer Studio.
- 3 Join your own table on shapeISO (US-NY, US-CA) or shapeName to build a choropleth.
- 4 Switch to the full-detail file only if you need every coastline vertex for measuring or print output.
Hosted simplified GeoJSON (437 KB)
56 units, web-ready, public domain — used by the map preview above
Full-detail GeoJSON from geoBoundaries
Every original vertex, ~13 MB — for analysis and cartographic output
US Census cartographic boundary files
Official source, multiple resolutions and vintages
geoBoundaries USA metadata
Machine-readable licence, source, and download record
FAQ
How many states are in the file?
56 units: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands).
Is the file really public domain?
Yes. The boundaries derive from the US Census Bureau MAF/TIGER database, which is a work of the US federal government and carries no copyright. No attribution is legally required, though crediting the Census Bureau is good practice.
Why do Alaska, Hawaii, and Michigan look like several polygons?
Administrative boundaries follow legal borders rather than coastlines alone, so those states come through as multipolygons. Every GIS tool handles multipolygons natively — it only matters if your code assumes exactly one polygon per feature.
Can I get counties instead of states?
Yes — see the US counties boundary dataset for all 3,233 county equivalents in the same GeoJSON format and field layout.
How current are these boundaries?
The hosted layer represents the 2018 TIGER boundary vintage published through geoBoundaries. State outlines change very rarely, but for a legal or redistricting use case check the Census Bureau page linked above for the newest release.