Populations skyrocketed. The state of Kansas grew from a population of just under 365,000 to nearly a million people during the 1870s. The number of inhabitants in Nebraska nearly tripled, rising to nearly half a million. Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakota Territory showed parallel population gains. New counties, villages, and towns sprang up by the hundreds throughout the region and a speculative bubble emerged around the buying and selling of farmland and urban lots. Population continued to surge throughout the region well into the decade of the 1880s.