This is “Every State in the US” by Wendover Productions and made possible by The Great
Courses Plus.
We’ll start with Alabama, the first state alphabetically.
Magnolia Springs, Alabama is the only town in America to have their mail delivered by
boat, although the longest mail delivery route in America is in rural Oklahoma where delivery
drivers have to drive 187.6 miles each day to delivery the mail to around 200 houses.
Oklahoma’s state vegetable is the watermelon, which happens to be a fruit, and Oklahoma
is also home to Kansas, the town.
The real Kansas, or more specifically this point, is the geographic center of the contiguous
United States.
What Kansas is not home to is Kansas City which counterintuitively is in Missouri where
the population center of the US is—the average location of every American.
Missouri borders eight states, and is therefore tied with Tennessee as the state that borders
the most other states.
Tennessee was a southern state that seceded from the United States and joined the confederacy
in the lead up to the Civil War except for Scott County which seceded from Tennessee
and formed an unrecognized independent state.
Scott County didn’t actually officially rejoin Tennessee until 1986.
Tennessee’s western border was originally defined by the course of the Mississippi River
which has since changed course which has led to all these enclaves and exclaves of the
two states on the two sides of the river.
The Arkansas River, a major tributary of the Mississippi, begins all the way in Colorado,
where nobody’s entirely sure which mountain is the tallest, Mount Elbert or Mount Massive,
since their heights are within 10 feet of each other and people keep building piles
of rocks on the summits to make one mountain taller than the other.
Colorado is also home to the America’s longest continuous street —Colfax Avenue in Denver
at 26 miles long, but the shortest individually named street in America is reportedly McKinley
street in Bellefontiane Ohio at a mere 28 feet long.
Ohio’s northernmost point is actually south of Canada’s southernmost point—Pelee island.
Pelee island, Canada, in fact, is farther south than parts of 27 states including California
which as a state has a higher population than the entire country of Canada.
Los Angeles, California, despite being on the Pacific ocean, is east of six state capitals
including Reno, Nevada.
Nevada has the point in the entire United States where you’re farthest from a McDonalds—only
116 miles—although Nevada is not the state with the fewest McDonalds.
That title goes to the state with 29 McDonalds, North Dakota, which according to some legal
experts wasn’t technically a state until 2012 since their constitution was missing
this sentence which meant it didn’t fulfill the federal requirements for statehood.
Despite having the fewest McDonalds, North Dakota is not America’s least populated
state.
That’s Wyoming which has two sets of escalators in the entire state.
Wyoming is well known for hosting Yellowstone National Park, although a bit of it spills
over into Idaho, though in this section you can get away with murder.
You see, with the sixth amendment, if you’re placed on trial its required that you are
judged by a jury of your peers which means individuals from the same state and federal
district as where the crime was committed.
Yellowstone is its own Federal district meaning you’d need residents from Yellowstone to
be on the jury although if you were in the Idaho part you’d need Yellowstone residents
from Idaho to be on the Jury… except this 50 square mile section is entirely uninhabited,
so they wouldn’t be able to form a jury which means you’d walk free.
There’s also one single road connecting the entire southern section of Idaho to the
northern section.
Idaho, with its fairly low population, has one single telephone area code for the whole
state, just like neighboring Montana.
Montana is home to the least busy commercial airport in the US—Dawson Community Airport—at
4,000 passengers per year or about 11 per day.
Missoula Montana is also home to the warehouse of DFTBA where you can buy one of these—a
Wendover Productions t-shirt—for only $20.
The link is in the description.
The busiest airport in America is Atlanta’s at 49 million passengers per year or 135,000
per day.
Peachtree, a suburb of Atlanta, is a community that has 90 miles of golf-cart specific roads
adjacent to its normal roads since 9,000 families here have golf carts as their second cars.
Kids are even encouraged to drive to school from the age of 12 in their golf carts.
Georgia, or more specifically Springer Mountain, Georgia is the start of the 2,200 mile long
Appalachian Trail which is a hiking trail that terminates way up at Mount Katahdin,
Maine.
Maine is the only state in the United States to only border one other state and its also
the closest state to Africa—seriously, its closer than Florida.
The second closest state to Africa is Massachusetts or more specifically Cape Cod, Massachusetts
which is technically an island since a man-made canal separates it from the mainland.
Massachusetts is actually farther from Miami than Panama City is, and Miami is closer to
the country capitals of Nassau Bahamas and Havana Cuba than to its own state capital—Tallahassee.
Florida has the lowest highest point of any state—312 feet—23 times lower than South
Dakota’s highest point.
South Dakota is home to the geographic center of the entire United States including Alaska
and Hawaii and it was made a state a mere nine days before Washington, which was called
Columbia before it became a state.
Its name was changed as to not confuse it with the District of Columbia but obviously
that didn’t work out since DC’s city ended up also being called Washington.
Washington Place is the official residence of Hawaii’s governor and Hawaii was given
its own unique currency during WWII that was its only legal tender so that, in case the
Japanese successfully invaded Hawaii, the federal government could declare all of Hawaii’s
currency worthless to prevent the Japanese from using it.
The closest state to Hawaii is Alaska whose capital, Juneau, has no roads connecting it
with the rest of Alaska or North America meaning you can’t drive in or out.
Alaska is also one of the four states that completely bans outdoor billboards along with
Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont whose tallest building is only 11 stories tall.
That’s the shortest tallest building of any state.
The tallest building in the states is Freedom Tower in New York.
New York is home to Ellis Island, or at least this part of it.
Their territory is completely surrounded by New Jersey, similar to Liberty Island—home
to the Statue of Liberty—which is completely surrounded by New Jersey Waters which means
you need to travel through New Jersey to get from New York to New York.
Clinton Road in West Milford, New Jersey has America’s longest red light—a full five
minute wait.
New Jersey actually goes surprisingly far south[(still view of Kentucky’s —farther
south than Kentucky’s northernmost point.]
In its south-west corner, Kentucky has a rather large piece of territory thats not actually
connected to the rest of Kentucky.
Kentucky was the birthplace of Lincoln who was later elected to the Illinois House of
Representatives and in Illinois is the original burger king, but its not the burger king you’re
thinking of.
This burger king existed before this burger king and therefore sued burger king when they
came to Illinois for trademark infringement and won, so now no burger king is allowed
to operate within a 20 mile radius of this original burger king.
Chicago, Illinois, America’s 3rd largest city, is just a tad larger than the forth
largest city—Houston, Texas and Texas is so enormous that El Paso, Texas is closer
to Los Angeles than it is to Houston, Texas.
Texas’ northernmost point is also closer to Michigan than it is to its southernmost
point.
From Detroit, Michigan, you actually end up in Canada if you travel due south and Michigan
is also the only state to be made of two entirely separated sections.
Michigan’s Highway 185 is actually a bike path making it the only official highway in
America where cars are banned.
Michigan’s upper peninsula is only connected by land to Wisconsin which is home to the
Green Bay Packers—a team so popular that the waiting list for season tickets is 30
years long.
It’s so long that its common for parents to put their kids name on the list as soon
as they’re born.
In Watertown, Wisconsin is Utah street, but the real Utah has the longest section of Interstate
in the US with no gas stations—106 miles on I-70.
I-70 ends over 2,000 miles away in Baltimore, Maryland and the entire state of Maryland
has zero natural lakes.
It also has this panhandle that reaches a minimum width of 1.8 miles before expanding
back out to 30 miles width out near West Virginia which is definitively a southern state but
also has a panhandle that reaches as far north as New York City and Nebraska.
Monowi, Nebraska is the only incorporated municipality in the United States that have
a population of one.
The one resident, Elsie Eiler, is mayor and runs the library and tavern which is granted
a liquor license each year by Elsie herself.
Tortilla Flat, Arizona is six times larger than Monowi since it has six residents and
Arizona also has 1/4 of the four corners monument—the only point where four states meet in the US—Arizona,
Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico which as a state, by law, still recognizes Pluto as a
planet.
New Mexico is typically the last state to vote in presidential primaries whereas Iowa
is usually the first.
Iowa is the only state in the US whose eastern and western borders are both water—in this
case rivers.
The eastern border is the Mississippi river, which happens to be the namesake for Mississippi.
The Mississippi river also flowed backwards for a full 24 hours in 2012 during Hurricane
Isaac but the Mississippi doesn’t actually reach the ocean in Mississippi.
It does so in Louisiana—home to the longest bridge over water in the world at 24 miles.
That’s so long that for eight of those miles, you can’t even see land on either side.
One of the other longest bridges in the US is in North Carolina—the the Virginia Dare
Memorial Bridge which carries cars out to Kitty Hawk where the Wright Brothers successfully
flew a heavier than air aircraft for the first time in history.
It was a 12 second, 120 foot flight—thats shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747.
North Carolina’s southern neighbor is South Carolina although South Carolina isn’t all
that south since more than half of it is north of North Carolina’s southernmost point and
South Carolina also has a town called North making it North, South Carolina.
South Carolina was the site of the first civil war battle and the civil war ended up having
a total of one battle over in Indiana where the Indy 500 speedway is which is so enormous
that you could comfortably fit the entire country of the vatican inside it.
It can also fit 400,000 people which is the highest capacity of any sports arena in the
world.
Indiana’s state beverage is water, while Oregon’s is milk.
Portland, Oregon is home to the world’s smallest park according to the Guinness world
records book—mill end park.
Oregon is also one of the few states to not have a sales tax along with New Hampshire—the
only state to have no law requiring adults to wear seat belts.
Connecticut Lake, in New Hampshire, is the source of the Connecticut River which is what
Connecticut the state is named after.
Hartford, Connecticut's airport, at less than 3 million passengers per year, is the smallest
airport in the US to have a direct flight to Europe.
Delaware, on the other hand, certainly doesn’t have a direct flight to Europe since its the
only state that you can’t fly to.
There’s not one commercial flight in or out of this tiny state.
It’s the second smallest state behind Rhode Island which is so small that the entire state
grows by 3% during low tide.
Rhode Island’s second largest city, Warwick, shares its name with Warwick Pennsylvania
and in Pennsylvania is Centralia where the ground has been on fire since 1962 due to
a coal mine fire and its expected to burn for over 200 years.
Pennsylvania borders Minnesota, well not really, but Pennsylvania Avenue does intersect Minnesota
Avenue in DC, and Minnesota is home to the northernmost point in the lower 48.
You see, most of the US-Canada border is defined by the 49th parallel but a surveying error
led to this.
The couple hundred residents of this area, called the Northwest angle, are completely
cut off from the US and need to pass into Canada then back into the United states to
go to school.
Also in northern Minnesota is Virginia, the town, but Virginia, the state is massive.
So massive that Ewing, Virigina, is closer to eight other state capitals than it is to
its own state capital, Richmond.
Alexandria, Virginia is actually closer to Toronto, Canada than it is to Ewing, Virginia.
Virginia also happens to go farther west than west Virginia.
Virginia is also home to this place, the headquarters of the Teaching Company who run the Great
Courses Plus.
And with that super smooth transition I do have to thank the Great Courses Plus for sponsoring
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