Yes, there’s quite a few places in the US where three states come together, but NY-RI-CT is the only one that’s in the ocean. There’s a couple of them in the middle of Lake Michigan, though. How many people know that Illinois and Michigan share a border?
Not just the Mississippi, but also the Missouri (someone cited one above), the Ohio, and even the Wabash.
Besides rivers shifting their channel, another contribution to this phenomenon is the way colonial borders were granted by British kings. When they favored someone who they were granting a new colony to, they sometimes granted them an entire river that formed the boundary of the colony. This was the case with the Ohio. Virginia, which originally owned Kentucky, was granted the entire river, so the boundary is along the north side of that river, rather than down middle or through the deepest channel. So it doesn’t take much shifting of the river to move part of the north shore to Kentucky. I think the same thing happened with the Delaware-New Jersey situation. The Potomac is another such, being entirely within Maryland, although I don’t know of any cross-river enclaves that caused.
Ok a small correction on the Ohio River thing. It wasn’t a king that granted Virginia the entire river, but rather Parliament. This was in the aftermath of the French and Indian War.
Within Spain, Navarre has an enclave in Saragossa: the town of Petilla de Aragón, birthplace of 1906 Medicine Nobel winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal (he proved that the nervous system wasn’t a single “blob” as had previously been thought, but formed by individual cells he called “neurons”).
Burgos has a very large one within the province of Álava: the Condado de Treviño.
On the order of the Northwest Angle (MN) and Point Roberts (WA), there is a tiny slice of Michigan between the Maumee River/Bay and the Ottawa River that can only be reached by land by driving through Toledo, OH. (It is a relic of the Toledo War.)
There’s a small bit of Wisconsin, in the far NW corner, that can only be gotten to thru Minnesota by road. It’s got a bar, a body shop, a couple dozen houses, and a ski resort on it. Wabegon
How about the Vennbahn? There are no less than five exclaves of western Germany surrounded by Belgium. But wait – the western part of Belgium that does the slicing is a narrow thread. It used to be a railroad built by Germany but was lost to Belgium by the Treaty of Versailles. The railroad fell into disuse and is now mostly* a paved hiking and bicycle trail, but it still belongs to Belgium.
*There are a few km of track that you can rent a pedal car to travel on.
There are several ex/en/claves in the hills surrounding the Ferghana Valley, in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, of each other. Barak: of Kyrgyzstan, surrounded by Uzbekistan.
Chon-Qora: of Uzbekistan, surrounded by Kyrgyzstan.
Jani-Ayil: of Uzbekistan, surrounded by Kyrgyzstan. Qayraghoch: of Tajikistan, surrounded by Kyrgyzstan. Sarvan: of Tajikistan, surrounded by Uzbekistan. Shohimardon: of Uzbekistan, surrounded by Kyrgyzstan. So‘x: of Uzbekistan, surrounded by Kyrgyzstan. Vorukh: of Tajikistan, surrounded by Kyrgyzstan.
Naxçıvan is an autonomous republic of Azerbaijan that is detached from the rest of the country (Armenia gets in between), but does have a short border with Turkey.
There are several Mississippi enclaves on the West side of Miss River in Arkansas, and Vice Versa. Just South of Memphis. Maybe all the way down the river into SW Mississippi where it shares a border w/ Louisiana
I checked the territorial waters thing regarding Pt. Roberts, WA, USA. It’s territorial waters are contiguous with the mainland’s territorial waters.
So you can boat back and forth between Pr. Roberts and, say, Bellingham and stay in US waters the whole way. OTOH, for the places in BC along Boundary Bay to boat to, say, Vancouver, BC you have to cross US waters.
Checking other places along the US-Canada boundary, I see that on the east coast no similar situations arises, although channels and bridges might limit what size boats could pass from Moose Island, ME to other US territorial waters.
On the Alaska/BC border it’s a really long and careful boat ride from Stewart, BC to to get open seas while staying in Canadian waters. Even longer if starting near there on the US side and staying in US waters.
Narrow passages and canals make it tricky to stay in just one country’s waters in the Great Lakes region. In particular, to boat from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario via US waters requires the “boat” to be a barrel and a less-than-safe trip over Niagara Falls.
(The Arctic Ocean boundary is straightforward and therefore utterly boring.)
It’s also the only part of New York State with a zip code that starts with “0”. (Every other part of NYS has ‘1’ as the leading digit of its zip code.)
I wonder whether the Erie Canal has connections to Lake Ontario, say around Rochester?
And I wonder whether there is a treaty specifically allowing US vessels to transit the Welland Canal without going through Canadian customs? Is the St Lawrence Seaway an international passage in some sense?
Up until 1994 there was Kowloon Walled City, an abandoned Chinese fort in Kowloon City in British Hong Kong. It became a completely lawless settlement - 50,000 people crammed into 300 haphazardly-interconnected buildings on 6.4 acres of land. Criminals, unlicensed doctors, people who just wanted to live outside the law - it was a really interesting situation, and a fascinating place.
Chip Delaney’s Triton features a “lawless zone” for those wishing not to comply even with the colony moon’s libertarian regulations. But it was no haven for criminals, as cops weren’t bound by laws there, either. No due process in the free zone. But you’re free to hang dirty laundry unless someone cuts it down.
A quibble with the thread title: Enclaves and exclaves aren’t so much “geographical” as “border” anomalies. Physical features remain in place; people draw their lines wherever and claim whatever, changing with the latest conquest.
Whichever of Egypt or Sudan claims it, would effectively lose their claim to the Halayib Triangle, because they’d then be using the same border definition as their opponent. So it’s not that Bir Tawil is shitty, it’s that nobody wants to be first to blink.
Other microstate idiots have tried claiming it, but it’s in the Sahara…good luck with that.
