carto - Georeferencing 1990 U.S. county names / FIPS for CartoDB?

I have a data table with columns of county and state names as well as FIPS codes for 1990 U.S. counties.

I cannot easily merge shape data into the data (e.g. the Census ones), but CartoDB does not recognize the "administrative regions" being these counties at all when I ask to georeference this data.

Is there a way around this?

Answer

Follow these steps:

1. 
   

   Download a us counties shapefile. Here's one that will work.

   
   


2. 
   

   Import the zipped UScounties file into CartoDB as a new table.

   
   
   


3. 
   

   Change the fips column's data type to number. (click on the word 'string' right below 'fips' and select number).

   
   


4. 
   

   Click the merge tables button on the right side of the tool bar when you are in data view.

   
   


5. 
   

   Choose 'column join' as the merge type.

   
   



6. 
   

   Select the fips column for the U.S. Counties and the county_fips_code column from your CSV file.

   
   

This worked for me and I'm including screen shots below. You can also follow this tutorial from CartoDB on how to do a merge using their software.