500,000 people were at the 9-12 March on Washington
Comments (1) There a lot of debate on how many people attended the 9/12 Tea Party march in Washington DC. I was there, and paid attention to the crowd size - The photos demonstrate a MINIMUM of 500,000 people. This is the number of people who attended Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration! Here’s the analysis:
Simply put, the West Lawn of the White House up to the first block of the mall to 3rd Street were completely packed. That area alone holds 240,000 people. Source: USA Today has a graphic that uses National Park Service data to estimate crowds (when they did that sort of thing). Here’s a screen capture of the interactive USA Today graphic from the blog Nice Deb. which has a good analysis of her own on the crowd size estimate.
The USA Today graphic does not show density figures for the additional people who were in areas to the north and south of the Capitol West Lawn and the block between 1st and 3rd Streets. There were a LOT of people in these areas, particularly in the northern area. Using the two blocks of the National Mall as a reasonable substitute for this space, and the count others who were in areas to the West of 3rd Street on the Mall, as well as camped out on the streets, I arrive at the the half a million figure. The final figure is most likely more than that, but it most definitely is not less than 500,000, and certainly not the Washington DC Fire Department Estimate of 60,000-70,000!
9/12 Crowd Image- My Estimated size - @500,000
Million Man March – Estimated Size = @837,000 +/- 20%
