United States Border Walls

I kept thinking about this map I’d seen somewhere—maybe on Reddit, maybe Twitter, one of those places where fascinating things surface and then vanish into the digital ether. Someone had visualized land elevation by turning U.S. state borders into vertical 3D barriers, each rising or falling based on the surrounding terrain. The concept was both strange and brilliant, transforming administrative lines into sculptural representations of geography. So I decided to create my own version using high-resolution terrain elevation data.

The elevation data I used comes from Solargis, developed for the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), a global initiative led by the World Bank. It’s a detailed raster layer designed for renewable energy planning—but it works just as well for exploring topography in creative ways.

Once I made that first map, I couldn’t stop thinking: what other kinds of data could shape these walls? Elevation made sense as a natural feature—but what about something climatic, like rainfall? After all, precipitation varies dramatically across the country and tends to follow natural patterns influenced by terrain and proximity to oceans and mountain ranges.

For this version, I turned to WorldClim’s BIO12 dataset, which provides annual precipitation values across the globe at a high resolution. Using the same logic, I transformed state borders into barriers whose height represents the amount of rain that falls along them in a year.

Then I wanted to flip the concept. Natural boundaries are shaped by geography and climate—but administrative boundaries, like states, are created by people. So I asked: what if we made those borders feel more human? What if the height of each wall showed how many people live near that line?

To build this version, I used population data from NASA’s Gridded Population of the World (GPW) dataset. This global data layer provides estimated population counts at a fine scale. I used it to calculate the number of people living directly along state borders and translated that into the height of the barrier.

After finishing all three maps, I decided to combine them into an animated video to better compare and explore them.

But then I thought—why stop at state boundaries? County lines also offer an interesting view of how people and places are organized. So I applied the same methods at the county level, using the same elevation, rainfall, and population datasets, just with more detail.

The result: a new set of 3D maps where county borders form walls shaped by elevation, climate, and population density. The county-level patterns often differ sharply from the state-level ones and provide a more granular view of how terrain and people interact with administrative boundaries.

And of course, I also compiled these maps into a second animated video, just like I did with the state-level versions.

If you’ve made similar experiments or have ideas for other kinds of data that could be turned into 3D “walls” along boundaries, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below!