The puzzle piece you are missing is topography. Load up a topo map of the state sometime. Nearly all of it is a twisted, practically fractal landscape of hills/mountains.

And unlike some other regions known for mountains (like New England) there are no (relatively) wide valleys between them.

It's wild, beautiful, and absolutely awful for building even a decent sized town in. It's why the few cities in the states are at the far edges, and even they are hilly. It's also obviously terrible for building transport infrastructure to get anywhere quickly.