walkerke
Issue Downloading 2007-2009 Census Blocks from TIGRIS
Hi there,
I apologize if this isn't the best venue for these kinds of questions - I just figured this is perhaps the group of folks that could best help me problem solve on TIGRIS features.
I'm trying to download all Census Blocks for 2007-2009. I don't think the TIGRIS R package has census block shapefiles prior to 2010. So I wrote a script to just scrape the Census TIGRIS website for all state-county-year .zips and format them as I need. The script works fine - but I'm running into a status code 429 error since I'm requesting a ton of files from the TIGRIS website (https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.2009.html#list-tab-790442341).
Curious if anyone has any better ideas to getting 2007-2009 census blocks for ever state other than scraping this tigris website? Does anyone know how many requests per dat I am allowed? I know for the Census its 500 per day...
Any help is appreciated - thanks!
Have you looked at https://www.nhgis.org? They provide bulk downloads of historical census boundaries.
On Fri, Jul 25, 2025 at 5:42 AM frumh002 @.***> wrote:
frumh002 created an issue (walkerke/tigris#207) https://github.com/walkerke/tigris/issues/207
Hi there,
I apologize if this isn't the best venue for these kinds of questions - I just figured this is perhaps the group of folks that could best help me problem solve on TIGRIS features.
I'm trying to download all Census Blocks for 2007-2009. I don't think the TIGRIS R package has census block shapefiles prior to 2010. So I wrote a script to just scrape the Census TIGRIS website for all state-county-year .zips and format them as I need. The script works fine - but I'm running into a status code 429 error since I'm requesting a ton of files from the TIGRIS website ( https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.2009.html#list-tab-790442341 ).
Curious if anyone has any better ideas to getting 2007-2009 census blocks for ever state other than scraping this tigris website? Does anyone know how many requests per dat I am allowed? I know for the Census its 500 per day...
Any help is appreciated - thanks!
— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/walkerke/tigris/issues/207, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACEZ6L6ESX524QCSJEIBHYD3KIQZXAVCNFSM6AAAAACCLRX6XSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43ASLTON2WKOZTGI3DGMBZGU2TCMA . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: @.***>
Unfortunately NHGIS only provides decennial census block shapefiles. So they have the 2000 and the 2010 but nothing in between I believe.