The US states have some iconic shape, but
if you look closely ,you'll see many
irregularities, such as the Kentucky Bend,
which is a tiny piece of Kentucky, home to 18
people, cut off from the rest of Kentucky
by the state of Missouri. The border is
defined by the Mississippi River, which
loops south below, and back north above, the thirty
six and a half parallel, which is a boundary
between Kentucky and Tennessee.
officially the 36.5 parallel was
supposed to be the entire Kentucky
Tennessee border, but the line drawn up to
the Tennesse river in 1780, between what was
at the time, parts of Virginia and North
Carolina, gradually drifted north as the
surveyors travelled across the still mostly
unexplored continent. When the line reached
the Tennessee River it was more than a
tenth of a degree off. But the states were like ... eh ...
good enough. In 1819, the border was extended to
the mississippi river, this time on the
correct line. But the error east Tennessee
River remained. Using rivers as natural
borders has one fundamental flaw: rivers
change. It is generally agreed upon that river
borders will change the gradual erosion of
banks but when the course of the river
changes suddenly through either man-made
or natural causes, the old river boundary is
used to prevent land and people from
switching states. It's fairly common for states
have some land on the wrong side of the
Mississippi and other rivers in the
Great Plains because of earthquakes and
floods. Notable examples include Carter
Lake, Iowa, which is a city on Nebraka's
side of the Missouri River next to Omaha's
airport, and the airport of the city of
St. Joseph, Missouri, just north of Kansas
city, which is cut off from the rest of
the state by 1952 flood. These situations
are easy to deal with inside the United
States, since people can move freely between
states but the Rio Grande border between
Texas and Mexico has similar river issues.
Every once in a while, the two countries
will exchange land, to clean up the border,
but they both still have some land on
the wrong side of the river. The Colorado
River border have a different problem:
the river ... sort of ... doesn't exist anymore.
Because of dams and diversions to
irrigate all this farmland, a stretch of
border between Arizona and Mexico is on
the driver bed where the river used to
be. Here they built a tunnel under the
driver bed for an irrigation canal in
Mexico, just south of the border. This lake
known as the Salton Sea was created by accident,
in 1905, when a flood broke through the
irrigation canal, and water kept flowing
for two years while engineers tried to fix the breach.
Agreements between governments to
conserve water, have allowed the river
to occasionally flow all the way to the Gulf
of California once again, but it's
intermittent, and far less than once was.
In New York, Liberty Island and Ellis
island are parts of the state of New
York, even though they're completely
surrounded by the waters of the state of
New Jersey. This is the result of an
1834 interstate compact when Ellis
Island was expanded between 1892
and 1934, it was thought to all be
part of New York, but in 1998, the supreme
court ruled that the land reclaimed
after 1834 belonged to New Jersey, since it was
reclaimed from their waters.
This left New York with a landlocked
enclave surrounded by new jersey. Delaware has
a couple of pieces of land that look like
they should be part of New Jersey. This
is because part of Delaware's borders
are defined by 12 mile circle centered
on a courthouse in Newcastle. In this
circle, the border with new jersey is
defined as the high-water mark of the
banks of the Delaware River. Where as
outside the circle, the border is defined
as the center of the river. Like with Ellis Island,
These areas are reclaimed land. Only the
tip of the artificial island in the
South is part of delaware because the 12 mile circle
only intersects part of the reclaimed
land. The mid-atlantic is home to many
more strange border situations, such as the
Eastern Shore of Virginia connected only
by this bridge that becomes a tunnel in
the middle of the Chesapeake bay. Also
the entire state of Maryland is pretty
weird. When Maryland was created in 1632
Europeans knew practically nothing about
the interior of the continent. Virginia
was just a few settlements near the
Chesapeake Bay, and the Duchess sweden
we're looking to establish colonies of
their own nearby. So the British
established a new colony on the
chesapeake bay, north of the Potomac
River, to strenthen their claim to the area. The
peninsula was cut approximately across from
the mouth of the Potomac, and was later
mark precisely. Though the border ended
up going through this island in the bay,
and this one off the coast.
The swedish colony was conquered by the
Dutch, and the Dutch by the British, and
some of that land eventually became
delaware. It was defined as the land to
the west of the Delaware River, including
the 12-mile circle and land to the south
up to Fenwick Island. This directly
overlapped with Marilyn's claim so they
agreed to split the peninsula in half. The
people who drew this border between 1763
and 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon,
evidently we were good at geometry
because the border goes west halfway
across the peninsula that follows
a tangent line to the 12 mile circle. Then there
is a line that goes north from this
point, until it
meets the mason-dixon line, known for
being the boundary between the slave
states in the south, and the free states
in the North. The line is 15 miles to the south
of where the most southernly part of
Philadelphia was at the time. The 12 mile circle
circle extends past the perpendicular
section of the line, so the border follows an
arc from the tangent point until it
reaches the line going north to the
mason-dixon line. though this created a
small wedge bounded by the circle and
two lines, which according to the
definitions, really belong to no one, but
both Delaware and Pennsylvania
claimed it.
The area was administered by delaware
and Pennsylvania gave up their
claim in 192.1 Maryland strange shape in
the West is the result of the up river
section of the Potomac coming very close
to the Mason-Dixon line. At one point if the
river veered north by two miles then
Maryland would have a Kentucky Bend
situation.
Maryland's western border is the near the
sourceof the potomac, but Pennsylvania
continues to a point five degrees of longitude
west of the Delaware River. At the
time they would not have known this
would be so close to West Virginia's Ohio
River border, leaving it with an awkward
Panhandle. When the time came to have the
civil war in 1861, the border slave
states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland,
and Delaware stuck with the Union which
was lucky for the North since otherwise
the capital Washington DC would be
surrounded by rebel states. The state
representatives from the western part of
Virginia wish to remain in the Union
despite the rest wishing to secede. The West
Virginians said what the rest of Virgina's
Representatives did was revolting, so
they should lose their seats and be
replaced.
They form their own Union Government of
Virgina and called the old rebel one
illegitimate, and began the process of
forming a new state, which was something
they wanted to do for a while anyway.
Since the Union controlled this border
region they split off with West Virginia
despite being pro-sucession. Michigan has 2
peninsulas, which have a bridge, but are
otherwise disconnected from one another.
They received the upper peninsula in
order to end the war
they were fighting with Ohio over Toledo.
Only one person was injured in the
fighting, but tensions were high enough
that they started shooting each other.
The border of ohio was supposed to be
the southern tip of Lake Michigan, but
the best map they had at the time showed
the lake to be a lot shorter than it really
was. Thus ohio believed their state
would have all the lake erie coast.
However, it was reported by first
trappers, that lake michigan extended
further south than previously thought.
In response to this, Ohio said that in
that conditional case, Ohio's northern
border will be on a diagonal line going
from the tip of Lake Michigan a point
on Lake Erie north of the port of toledo.
However, when the federal government was
approving Ohio's state hood they didn't
like Ohio's algorithmically defined
border, so the only approved the border
at being south of Lake Michigan. Thus
when they created the Michigan territory
they defined its southern border as the
tip of Lake Michigan, even Ohio have been
assuming Toledo which was north of this
line was theres. In 1816, the line claimed
by Ohio was surveyed. This angered the Michigan
territory who made their own survey
which follows the federally defined line.
The land between was called the Toledo
strip. Ohio blocked Michigan's attempt at
statehood while they claimed the strip
and both sides used militias to defend
their claim. Eventually Michigan ceded the land
to ohio in exchange for the upper
peninsula and statehood. Interestingly,
Detroit is immediately to the north of
Windsor, Ontario meaning someone born and
raised in South Detroit .. is Canadian.
Minnesota also has an exclave called the
northwest angle. In order for the hundred and
nineteen Americans that live there to
reach the rest of the state, they must
travel through Canada. When the United
States won independence, part of its
border was defined as the northwest
corner of lake of the woods and a line
from that point west to the Mississippi. The
Mississippi River failed to exist that
far north, so on most Maps the border was
just drive south from the lake. The
situation was left until 1818
when they agreed to make a simple border
on the 49th parallel from the Rockies to
Lake. The border would go directly north,
or south, from the northwest corner to
the 49th parallel, so they sent an
expedition to find the corner, built a pile of
nearby and called it a day.
It turns out is about a third of a
degree north of the parallel. They also
agreed to "share" the Oregon Territory on
the other side of the Rockies and decide
what to do with it later. When that time
came, the Oregon Territory was in between
Mexican California and Russian Alaska,
which would eventually be purchased by America
in 1867. Alaska is cut off from the rest
of America by Canada, but if the Americans
have followed through with "fifty four forty or fight"
then when they bought Alaska it would have
been connected.
However the Americans decided to be
reasonable, and in 1846 continued the 49th
parallel border to the Pacific coast.
They even let the British keep their fort on
the south of Vancouver Island. Although
this border ended up cutting off Point Roberts
from the rest of Washington State.
America was willing to settle because
they get annexed Texas and we're about
to fight the mexican-american war. Texas
claimed all of mexico's territory
immediately north of the Rio Grande, but
the state gave the land north of the 36
and a half parallel, as well as most of
what became new mexico, to the federal
government in exchange for paying off
the Texas government debt, as part of the
compromise of 1850 between slave and
free states. Which worked out ... perfectly.
Since in 1854, in the lead-up to the Civil
War, Free Staters and slave holders were
fighting the bloody Kansas war over
whether the Kansas Territory should allow
slavery. Its southern border with the
37th parallel which left a small strip
at a no man's land. In 1890, it became part
of the territory of Oklahoma, along with
the Indian Territory, which was the land
where a native tribes were forcibly
resettled during the trail of tears. But
going back to just before the Civil War,
in 1859 on the west coast near Point Roberts
It was unclear who controlled the
island in the channel. Tensions over the
island came to a frying point when an
American farmer shot a big owned by a
worker of a British company on one of
the islands. The two sides agreed to let
Germany decide the issue. The islands are
awarded to U.S. and the pig war ended with no
casualties.
Well except the pig ...
There are enough weird borders around the world to make an entire
series, which you can watch on the left.
Alternatively you can watch video on the
right, which gives the historical reasons
some countries like Bolivia and Ethiopia are landlocked.
Also please consider clicking the
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