Court Boundaries

Here's a fact I didn't know, and unless you're an appellate attorney, you probably didn't know either. This is the boundary map of the courts of appeals and district courts in the U.S.:


Looking at this, I have so many questions. Were these at one time supposed to be population-balanced, since they obviously are not supposed to be geographically balance or regionally coherent? If so, they are no longer anywhere near equal in population, since California is grouped with several other states and the six states of the 10th Court don't equal a city in the Golden State. Is the work among the courts supposed to be relatively equal? If not, do some courts get more judges based on their much larger populations and (I assume) larger number of cases?

I guess I don't have that much to say about this, except that it appears to be an example of an out-of-date way of thinking of the U.S.