How Walmart Conquered America: Mapped (1962-2025)

Witness the rise of Walmart from a single store in Arkansas to a nationwide empire. This map animation visualizes the relentless expansion of Walmart across the United States between 1962 and 2025. By tracking over 4,000 store openings, this timelapse reveals how the retail giant conquered the South, dominated the Midwest, and eventually saturated the entire country. In this video, we used data visualization to track over 60 years of retail history. You will see: 📍 The Explosion: How Walmart spread from the South/Midwest to the coasts. 📍 The Density: A visual representation of store saturation over time. 📍 The Timeline: Tracking the growth of Supercenters vs. Neighborhood markets. This visualization is built upon the incredible dataset compiled by Ben Schultz. If you are interested in the history of retail, particularly the flip side of this coin (the decline of Kmart), check out Ben's book: Attention Kmart Shoppers: America’s Discounter. (Note: I am not affiliated with the author, but this video would not be possible without his data collection efforts.) Keywords: #Walmart #DataVisualization #MapAnimation #RetailHistory #BusinessGeography #Timelapse #Economics