Messy US county level map

[Coco Sun]

Hi, I tried to draw a US-county-level map by following online tutorials. However, I could not figure it out no matter how many times I tried. Can anyone please help me?
I tried to upload shp file from the Census, but it was too large to upload. You can download the zip file from the attached website and use my stata code starting with spshape2dta.
https://www.census.gov/geographies/m...tab-1556094155

[Andrew Musau]

You will usually want to apply the Albers projection to a map of the US because the country spans a wide range of latitudes and longitudes, resulting in significant distortions when projected onto a flat surface. Additionally, it's often preferable to map the continental United States separately. Note that spmap and geo2xy are from SSC.

copy https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/GENZ2018/shp/cb_2018_us_county_20m.zip uscounty.zip, replace
unzipfile uscounty.zip, replace
spshape2dta  cb_2018_us_county_20m, saving(uscounty) replace

*APPLY ALBERS PROJECTION
use uscounty_shp,clear
geo2xy _Y _X, replace  proj(albers, 6378137 298.257223563 29.5 45.5 0 -95.837867)
save , replace

*REMOVE ALASKA, HAWAII & PUERTO RICO
use uscounty.dta , clear
drop if inlist(STATEFP, "02", "15", "72")
gen x = 1  
 
spmap x using uscounty_shp, id(_ID) ndsize(0.02 ..) ndocolor(black) osize(0.02 ..) fcolor(none) leg(off)

Res.:

[Coco Sun]

Thank you Mr. Musau! I tried to apply your code, it worked. However, after I added polygon, it didn't work again. I want to have clear boundaries for each county.

colorpalette HSV purplegreen, ipolate(5) nograph reverse
local colors `r(p)'
spmap availability20 using us_state_coordinates_20m_shp.dta, ///
id(_ID) cln(5) fcolor("`colors'") ///
legend(on) clbreaks(0 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00) clmethod(custom) ///
ocolor(gs6 ..) osize(0.03 ..) ///
ndfcolor(gs14) ndocolor(gs6 ..) ndsize(0.03 ..) ndlabel("No data") ///
polygon(data("us_state_coordinates_20m_shp") ocolor(black) osize(0.08) legenda(on) legl("Countries")) ///
legend(label(2 "0.00 to 0.20") label(3 "0.20 to 0.40") label(4 "0.40 to 0.60" ) label(5 "0.60 to 0.80")label(6 "0.80 to 1.00") pos(11) size(1.5) symx(2.5) symy(1.5)) legtitle("Ratio") legstyle(2) ///
note("Data source: European Commission Household Broadband Coverage. NUTS 2016 layers from Eurostat GISCO.", size(1.8))

[Andrew Musau]

I'm not sure how you want me to help you. With a dark green fill and county borders in black, you'll have a hard time identifying the border outlines. You should consider using transparency and lighter shades instead. Additionally, when including Alaska, Hawaii, and the island territories, you'll barely be able to see the smaller counties, primarily those along the East Coast.