From day 1 to year 250: What the United States was like on each of its milestone anniversaries

The United States is celebrating its 250th anniversary. It goes without saying that a lot has changed in America over the past two-and-a-half centuries. Since its founding in 1776, the U.S. has grown from a small, fragile group of colonies into a global superpower with more territory, a bigger population, a strong economy and a strong stature on the world stage.

Anniversaries are a great opportunity to take stock of where you are and look back at where you’ve been. With that in mind, here’s what America was like in its first days and at every 50-year milestone along the way.

1776 — The founding

President: No one

Population: 2,500,000

Number of states: 13

At the time of its founding, the United States was a disordered collection of 13 colonies that struggled to hold itself together, let alone mount a war against the world’s greatest military power.

The adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, marked the formal birth of the nation. But it was unclear at the time whether that brand-new nation would survive at all, let alone endure for another two-and-a-half centuries. When the Declaration was adopted, the U.S. was still seven years away from declaring victory in the Revolutionary War, 12 years away from ratifying the Constitution and 13 years away from naming George Washington as its first president.

Though it was home to just 2.5 million people in 1776, America had been growing rapidly in the previous decades. The U.S. economy at the time was built almost totally around agriculture. Thanks to cheap land and plentiful natural resources, the free population of the U.S. enjoyed what some historians believe was the highest standard of living on Earth. It was still the 18th century, though, when life expectancy in the Americas was less than 35 years, largely because so many children died early on. The relative affluence of the country’s white population was also made possible by the enslavement of roughly half a million African and African American people, mostly — but not entirely — in the Southern states.

1826 — 50th anniversary

President: John Quincy Adams

Population: 11,580,000

Number of states: 24

On its 50th anniversary, the United States was a nation in the midst of an extraordinary period of growth. Its population had quadrupled since its founding. Its landmass had grown even more. Eleven new states had been added as the country continued its westward expansion and gained huge new territories from France and Spain that would soon become the central U.S. and Florida.

America was an incredibly young country at the time. Thanks to a sky-high birthrate in the early years of the 19th century, the median age in the U.S. was under 17.

The economy was also maturing. The country’s first railroads began to appear. Factories were popping up in the Northeast. American exporters had built one of the world’s most successful shipping fleets to carry agricultural goods, especially cotton from the South, around the globe. Even the financial industry was starting to take root in New York.

But all of that growth came at a cost. The union had nearly torn itself apart in a fight over whether the new states should permit slavery. There had also been a long list of deadly conflicts with Native American tribes in the newly claimed American territories — and many more to come. The number of people held in slavery had tripled over the previous 50 years. And between the persistent threats of disease, malnutrition and poor sanitation, life expectancy in North America hadn’t improved at all since the days of the founding.

Oddly, America’s actual 50th anniversary is mostly remembered today as a day of tragedy. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two of the last surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence, died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826.

1876 — 100th anniversary

President: Ulysses S. Grant

Population: 46,107,000

Number of states: 37

America’s 100th anniversary came toward the end of a period of incredible progress for the United States. The country had just spent the previous decade reconstructing after the devastation of the Civil War. Slavery was over, and new amendments had been added to the Constitution guaranteeing freed slaves citizenship, equal protection under the law and the right to vote — formally, at least. The first Black legislators began representing their states in Congress.

Four years earlier, the United States had surpassed the United Kingdom to become the world’s biggest economy. The U.S. now had control of land stretching all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There were 37 states on July 4, 1876, with Colorado officially becoming the 38th a few weeks later. Immigrants began pouring into the country from all over the world. Life expectancy was finally starting to tick upwards.

To celebrate its centennial, the U.S. hosted a massive world’s fair in Philadelphia that offered a remarkable glimpse of the future. The list of items displayed to the public for the first time included the telephone, the first commercially successful typewriter, Heinz Ketchup, root beer and the “electric dynamo,” a key precursor to the light bulb. The 9 million visitors to the fair also got to see the right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty. The full statue was supposed to be a gift from the French to mark America’s centennial, but the pesky Franco-Prussian War and funding issues to build its pedestal delayed its completion by a decade.

Cracks in the Reconstruction Era were already starting to show in the years leading up to America’s 100th birthday. Less than a year later, the federal government abandoned its efforts to protect the civil rights of free Blacks in Southern states, clearing the way for the onset of the Jim Crow era.

1926 — 150th anniversary

President: Calvin Coolidge

Population: 117,397,000

Number of states: 48

America’s 150th anniversary came smack dab in the middle of the Roaring ’20s, a period of booming economic prosperity and cultural dynamism that saw the United States firmly establish itself as one of the world’s great powers. This boom period came after one of the most difficult decades in the country’s history, marked by World War I, the 1918 influenza pandemic and extreme racial violence, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

New technologies were transforming the lives of everyday Americans. Electricity was becoming widespread. Radios were becoming more commonplace. Movies had sound for the first time. Electric appliances like toasters, irons, washing machines and vacuums were becoming increasingly common. The “age of the automobile” had also begun, and by the end of the decade, a majority of U.S. households owned a car. The start of the Great Depression was still three years away.

Culture was undergoing its own renaissance. Jazz had become the defining American musical art form. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway had become two of the most important voices in literature. And in the world of sports, Babe Ruth, Red Grange and Jack Dempsey were on the path to becoming legends. Meanwhile, prohibition made the manufacturing and sale of alcohol illegal, allowing for the rise of speakeasies, bootlegging and organized crime.

Developments in medicine and public health allowed life expectancy to steadily increase to the point where the average American lived 20 years longer than they did half a century earlier. The makeup of the American population was also beginning to shift, as new restrictions caused the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. to plummet.

Hoping to recapture the magic of the centennial exposition, Philadelphia held another massive fair to mark the occasion. But the event was such a disaster, Variety famously called it “America’s Greatest Flop.”

1976 — 200th anniversary

President: Gerald Ford

Population: 214,740,000

Number of states: 50

Political division, stubborn inflation, a wobbly economy, mass protests, international turmoil, a president with an approval rating in the 30s … So many of the things that describe the United States today also applied to the state of the country at its bicentennial.

By the summer of 1976, Americans were eager to “turn the page” from the incredibly fraught era they had just endured — a period defined by the political assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X; the deeply unpopular Vietnam War; and Richard Nixon’s presidency-ending Watergate scandal. Some things had improved, though. Americans were living longer, earning more money, and had gained major breakthroughs in racial and gender equality.

Gerald Ford — who was only president because Richard Nixon and Nixon’s first vice president, Spiro Agnew, had resigned — led a national celebration that was virtually impossible to escape. There were parades and fireworks in major cities, a Freedom Train that crossed the country and a Super Bowl halftime show with the theme “200 Years and Just a Baby.” The bicentennial’s signature red, white and blue logo was everywhere. It was featured on so many commemorative coins, plates, cups and posters that some critics referred to the anniversary as the “buy-centennial.”

For all of the similarities between 1976 and today, there are some stark differences. Americans back then were, on average, significantly younger, less educated, less diverse and more likely to have been born in the U.S.

2026 — 250th anniversary

President: Donald Trump

Population: 342,600,000

Number of states: 50

The United States today is both a testament to the extraordinary progress that the country has made over the past two-and-a-half centuries and a reminder of how many challenges it still faces.

The population has exploded, with more than 128 million people added in just the past 50 years. The economy has expanded to reach a once-unimaginable $31 trillion in value. The typical U.S. family is earning more than previous generations. Life expectancy at birth has increased to 79 years. And technology has radically transformed our lives (see: computers, the walkman, the internet, iPods, smartphones and AI).

Despite all of those gains, Americans are greeting the country’s 250th anniversary in a sour mood. Recent polls show that three-quarters of respondents are dissatisfied with the way things are going, and only a third believe that the American dream still exists.