US States Boundaries — Download States as GeoJSON
Quick answer: preview every US state and territory on the map, then download the whole set as one GeoJSON FeatureCollection — one polygon (or multipolygon) per state.
US states and territories
The United States publishes two sub-national levels through geoBoundaries. ADM1 is the 50 states plus territories and the District of Columbia; ADM2 breaks those into counties.
Simplified loads far faster; full detail keeps every vertex.
Data from geoBoundaries. Files are assembled in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
What is in the file
The ADM1 download is a single GeoJSON FeatureCollection covering the 50
states, the District of Columbia, and US territories — 56 units in total.
Each feature carries a
shapeName
property naming the state, alongside the identifier and geometry fields
geoBoundaries publishes.
Because administrative boundaries follow legal borders rather than coastlines alone, some states come through as multipolygons — Michigan, Hawaii, and Alaska in particular. Any GIS tool handles that natively, but it is worth knowing if you are writing code that assumes one polygon per feature.
States or counties?
- ADM1 — states, DC, and territories. Use this for choropleth maps, state-level joins, and national overviews.
- ADM2 — counties. Roughly 3,000 units, so the file is considerably larger and simplified geometry matters more.
Need country outlines instead? Use the country boundary downloader, which covers every country at every published level.
Working with the data
- 1. Download the GeoJSON above. Simplified geometry is enough for web maps; choose full detail for analysis where state borders must be exact.
- 2. Open it in the Studio viewer to click individual states and read their attributes.
- 3. Convert to Shapefile for ArcGIS or QGIS, or to KML for Google Earth.
- 4. Join your own state-level CSV on the state name to build a choropleth.
License and attribution
US state boundaries in geoBoundaries come from the United States Census Bureau and are released as public domain. You can use them commercially without attribution, though crediting geoBoundaries and the Census Bureau is good practice.
Related tools
- Country boundaries by level — any country, ADM0 through ADM4.
- US cities and towns — settlement points for mapping.
- Boundary data directory — compare sources such as Natural Earth and GADM.
- Measure area — check the area of a state or custom polygon.