About this tool
The states visited map
A clean, single-purpose map of all 50 US states. Click the ones you've been to and watch the map fill in. It's the fastest way to answer the question every American traveler has been asked at least once: “so how many states have you been to?”
What is it?
An interactive US states map with two modes: mark states as visited or mark them as wish list. The map is drawn from the US Census Bureau's TIGER boundaries via the standard us-atlas topojson package, rendered on the cream CartoDB Voyager basemap to match the rest of My Travel Maps. Your selections are stored in your own browser — no login, no server, no data collection.
Note that we deliberately don't show Washington D.C. as a state (it isn't one) and we don't include US territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, or the US Virgin Islands in the states tool. If you want to mark visits to those, use the city pins tool instead.
Who is it for?
- American road-trippers who want to see every state they've ever driven through.
- People on the “all 50 states” quest — the informal club of travelers trying to visit every state before they die.
- Truck drivers, pilots, and traveling sales reps whose jobs take them across the country and who want a visual of decades of movement.
- Families keeping a shared journal of summer vacations and weekend getaways.
- College students planning cross-country road trips with roommates and wanting to see which states are most efficient to tick off.
How to use it
It works like the country map, minus the world part:
- Click a state to mark it in your current mode.
- Use the top-right toggle to flip between “Visited” and “Want to visit.”
- Clear all (red button, top-right) wipes the map clean after a confirmation.
- The bar at the bottom shows states visited, percent complete, and wish list count — all updating live.
Use cases
- Tracking progress toward all 50 states — the most common goal this tool gets used for.
- Planning the next road trip to hit missing states in one efficient loop.
- Recapping a lifetime of driving — truck drivers in particular tend to find this satisfying.
- Family vacation journal — a shared tool the whole family updates after each trip.
- Bragging rights — sharing a finished “all 50” map on social media.
Five examples of real use
1. The cross-country road-tripper
Someone who drives from New York to Los Angeles in two weeks, marking every state they pass through each night in the motel. By the end of the trip, they have an almost-continuous band of green from coast to coast.
2. The 49/50 hunter
A retiree who's been to 49 states and is planning one last trip to knock out Hawaii. The wish-list mode marks Hawaii sage for months, then finally turns green when they land in Honolulu.
3. The long-haul trucker
A long-haul trucker who's been to every state through work and wants a single visual of decades of driving. Spoiler: the map fills completely in about 90 seconds.
4. The national park completer
Someone hitting all 63 US national parks uses the states map to track geographic progress alongside their park list. Seeing the two maps next to each other helps them plan the most efficient order for the remaining parks.
5. The college road trip
Three college roommates planning a summer drive mark their “must-hit” states in wishlist mode, realize they can cover 12 of them in a single 3,000-mile loop, and set off the next week.