diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 681fc88..a1bedfc 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -34,7 +34,9 @@ Suggests:
     ggplot2,
     scales,
     tidycensus,
-    tigris
+    tigris,
+    rrapply,
+    dendextend
 URL: https://elbersb.github.io/segregation/
 BugReports: https://github.com/elbersb/segregation/issues
 RoxygenNote: 7.2.3
diff --git a/NAMESPACE b/NAMESPACE
index 6c5aa92..ca17fde 100644
--- a/NAMESPACE
+++ b/NAMESPACE
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 # Generated by roxygen2: do not edit by hand
 
+S3method(as.dendrogram,segcompression)
 S3method(print,segcompression)
 export(compress)
 export(dissimilarity)
@@ -23,4 +24,5 @@ export(segplot)
 import(RcppProgress)
 import(data.table)
 importFrom(Rcpp,sourceCpp)
+importFrom(stats,as.dendrogram)
 useDynLib(segregation, .registration = TRUE)
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index d4803a3..3f90765 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 # segregation (development version)
 
+- various improvements to compression algorithm
+- add dendrogram visualization
+
 # segregation 1.0.0
 
 - add mutual_total_nested
diff --git a/R/compression.R b/R/compression.R
index cd64fe2..0df212e 100644
--- a/R/compression.R
+++ b/R/compression.R
@@ -238,3 +238,155 @@ get_crosswalk <- function(compression, n_units = NULL, percent = NULL, parts = F
     setnames(combined, "unit", compression$unit)
     combined
 }
+
+#' @importFrom stats as.dendrogram
+#' @export
+as.dendrogram.segcompression <- function(object, ...) {
+    if (utils::tail(object$iterations$N_units, 1) != 1) {
+        stop("Compression algorithm needs to be run on complete dataset (max_iter = Inf)")
+    }
+    if (!requireNamespace("rrapply", quietly = TRUE)) {
+        stop("Please install rrapply to use this function")
+    }
+    if (!requireNamespace("dendextend", quietly = TRUE)) {
+        stop("Please install dendextend to use this function")
+    }
+
+    reduction <- 0
+    tree <- list()
+
+    for (i in seq_len(nrow(object$iterations))) {
+        old_unit <- object$iterations[i, ][["old_unit"]]
+        new_unit <- object$iterations[i, ][["new_unit"]]
+        M_wgt <- object$iterations[i, ][["M_wgt"]]
+        reduction <- reduction + M_wgt
+
+        if (length(tree) > 0) {
+            find_old <- rrapply::rrapply(tree,
+                classes = "list",
+                condition = function(x, .xname) x == old_unit,
+                f = function(x, .xpos) .xpos,
+                how = "flatten"
+            )
+            find_new <- rrapply::rrapply(tree,
+                classes = "list",
+                condition = function(x, .xname) x == new_unit,
+                f = function(x, .xpos) .xpos,
+                how = "flatten"
+            )
+        } else {
+            find_old <- list()
+            find_new <- list()
+        }
+
+        if (length(find_old) > 0 && length(find_new) > 0) {
+            indices <- sort(c(find_old[[1]][1], find_new[[1]][1]))
+            combined <- list(tree[[indices[1]]], tree[[indices[2]]])
+            attr(combined, "height") <- reduction
+
+            tree[[indices[1]]] <- combined
+            tree[[indices[2]]] <- NULL
+        } else if (length(find_old) > 0 || length(find_new) > 0) {
+            if (length(find_old) > 0) {
+                index <- find_old[[1]][1]
+                new_item <- list(new_unit)
+                attr(new_item, "label") <- new_unit
+            } else {
+                index <- find_new[[1]][1]
+                new_item <- list(old_unit)
+                attr(new_item, "label") <- old_unit
+            }
+            attr(new_item, "height") <- 0
+            attr(new_item, "members") <- 1
+            attr(new_item, "leaf") <- TRUE
+
+            if (M_wgt == attr(tree[[index]], "height")) {
+                tree[[index]][[length(tree[[index]]) + 1]] <- new_item
+            } else {
+                combined <- list(tree[[index]], new_item)
+                attr(combined, "height") <- reduction
+                tree[[index]] <- combined
+            }
+        } else {
+            lhs <- list(old_unit)
+            attr(lhs, "label") <- old_unit
+            attr(lhs, "height") <- 0
+            attr(lhs, "members") <- 1
+            attr(lhs, "leaf") <- TRUE
+            rhs <- list(new_unit)
+            attr(rhs, "label") <- new_unit
+            attr(rhs, "height") <- 0
+            attr(rhs, "members") <- 1
+            attr(rhs, "leaf") <- TRUE
+            combined <- list(lhs, rhs)
+            attr(combined, "height") <- M_wgt
+            attr(combined, "members") <- 2
+            tree[[length(tree) + 1]] <- combined
+        }
+    }
+
+    dend <- tree[[1]]
+    class(dend) <- "dendrogram"
+    dend <- dendextend::fix_members_attr.dendrogram(dend)
+    dend <- midcache.dendrogram(dend)
+    return(dend)
+}
+
+# copied from stats -- not exported
+midcache.dendrogram <- function(x) {
+    stopifnot(inherits(x, "dendrogram"))
+    setmid <- function(d, type) {
+        depth <- 0L
+        kk <- integer()
+        jj <- integer()
+        dd <- list()
+        repeat {
+            if (!stats::is.leaf(d)) {
+                k <- length(d)
+                if (k < 1) {
+                    stop("dendrogram node with non-positive #{branches}")
+                }
+                depth <- depth + 1L
+                kk[depth] <- k
+                if (storage.mode(jj) != storage.mode(kk)) {
+                    storage.mode(jj) <- storage.mode(kk)
+                }
+                dd[[depth]] <- d
+                d <- d[[jj[depth] <- 1L]]
+                next
+            }
+            while (depth) {
+                k <- kk[depth]
+                j <- jj[depth]
+                r <- dd[[depth]]
+                r[[j]] <- unclass(d)
+                if (j < k) {
+                    break
+                }
+                depth <- depth - 1L
+                midS <- sum(vapply(r, .midDend, 0))
+                attr(r, "midpoint") <- (.memberDend(r[[1L]]) + midS) / 2
+                d <- r
+            }
+            if (!depth) {
+                break
+            }
+            dd[[depth]] <- r
+            d <- r[[jj[depth] <- j + 1L]]
+        }
+        d
+    }
+    setmid(x)
+}
+
+.midDend <- function(x) {
+    attr(x, "midpoint") %||% 0
+}
+
+.memberDend <- function(x) {
+    attr(x, "x.member") %||% (attr(x, "members") %||% 1L)
+}
+
+`%||%` <- function(L, R) {
+    if (is.null(L)) R else L
+}
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test_compression.R b/tests/testthat/test_compression.R
index a53bd70..06b9626 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test_compression.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test_compression.R
@@ -147,3 +147,12 @@ test_that("local neighbors", {
             res_local$iterations[pct_M > 0.99][.N][["N_units"]]
     )
 })
+
+test_that("dendrogram", {
+    dend <- as.dendrogram(res_all)
+    expect_equal(attr(dend, "height"), res_all$iterations$M[[1]])
+    expect_equal(attr(dend, "members"), length(unique(res_all$data$school)))
+
+    res_limited <- compress(subset, "race", "school", weight = "n", max_iter = 5)
+    expect_error(as.dendrogram(res_limited))
+})
diff --git a/vignettes/plotting.Rmd b/vignettes/plotting.Rmd
index 824bdbf..fa0df46 100644
--- a/vignettes/plotting.Rmd
+++ b/vignettes/plotting.Rmd
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 ---
-title: "Visualizing segregation"
+title: "Visualizing and compressing segregation"
 output: rmarkdown::html_vignette
 vignette: >
-  %\VignetteIndexEntry{Visualizing segregation}
+  %\VignetteIndexEntry{Visualizing and compressing segregation}
   %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
   %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
 ---
@@ -134,6 +134,14 @@ between the number of merges and the loss in segregation information:
 scree_plot(comp)
 ```
 
+Another way to learn more about the compression is to visualize the information as a dendrogram:
+
+```{r}
+dend <- as.dendrogram(comp)
+dendextend::labels(dend) <- NULL # remove the labels
+plot(dend)
+```
+
 The third step is to create a new dataset based on the desired level of compression. 
 This can be achieved using the function `merge_units()`, and either `n_units` or `percent`
 can be specified to indicate the desired level of compression.