Shrinking St. Louis, Missouri – 70 American Cities are Now Larger

I can't remember the year, but I recall that St. Louis used to be one of the 20 largest cities in America. Not anymore. How much has St. Louis shrunk? 70 cities in America now boast a larger population than the Gateway City.

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I did some looking around on Wikipedia and was astonished to learn that St. Louis, Missouri used to have a population of over 850,000 in the 1950's saying "it reached its peak population of 856,796 at the 1950 census." 

Take a guess what St. Louis population is now? I thought I knew, but I was wrong, too. This topic came up as 24/7 Wall St just shared the top 50 biggest cities in America for 2024. St. Louis is nowhere to be found. 

Data Commons says St. Louis had a population of "286,578 in 2022". That makes it the 71st biggest city in America for 2024. What in the heck happened?

I learned some history about St. Louis in my research including the fact that the city had over 220 automakers between 1900 and 1929. It was between 1950 and 1990 when the jobs went away and then the people did, too.

It was around 5 years ago when St. Louis, Missouri dropped out of the top 20 cities in America and now it's not even in the top 50. I personally have a soft spot in my heart for St. Louis and always will, but there's no ignoring numbers that show the city is trending the wrong direction.

Maybe it will eventually become a quiet river town again with hopefully a great baseball team again? Hey, I can hope.