1. Vermont is a very small state

Vermont is a small state when measured either by population and land area. Vermont has the second smallest population of any state at 626,042 according to 2013 U.S. Census data. Wyoming is the smallest with 582,658.

The United States as a whole has a population of 316,128,839, which means only one out of 500 people in the U.S. lives in Vermont. You have a greater chance of meeting someone from the city of Nashville, Tennessee, which has a 2014 population of 644,014 than you do from Vermont.

Vermont is not the smallest state by area. That honor goes to Rhode Island. Six states have smaller land areas than Vermont—New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island (in that order).

Still, the land area of Vermont at 9,249 square miles constitutes just one-quarter of one percent of the total land area of the United States or about 1/400^th. Put another way, and as shown on the map that follows, you could fit 28 “Vermonts” into Texas. In fact, Vermont fits pretty neatly into the Texas panhandle. And at nearly 26,000 square miles the panhandle alone is nearly three times the size of the entire state of Vermont. Now that’s small.

Consider one more observation. In the southern part of the state you can drive from Bennington, Vermont--at the New York border to Brattleboro--on the border with New Hampshire--along VT 9 in a little more than an hour. In total you would have covered a mere 44 miles. The picture below shows Vermont superimposed on Texas.