San Francisco is so far west of Los Angeles that L.A. is closer than S.F. to ALL of the cities of the Northeast U.S. and Canada: New York, Boston, Montreal, etc.
Just for laughs I just did a Keyword Search for “geograph*” (* is a wild card) for all threads with that string in the title which received at least 10 replies and got 124 hits, going back to
Quite a few of them don’t appear to be of the same trivia variety that this thread has produced, but you might find some of them worth pursuing.
I’d post the list but I haven’t attached the URLs for them and I’m not sure how many of them would be of general interest. This post is just to let you know there are many other threads of potential interest to Geography Trivia Fans. 
Ah common story (the surveying party is usually drunk) but alas not true. The crest of the Bitterroot Mountains actually weren’t precisely surveyed until into the 20th century so if you look at old maps the MT/ID border is sort of a vague squiggle.
The actual story, though, isn’t too far off from burpo the wonder mutt’s feuding states. When the territorial boundaries for the region were being laid out in congress, one congressman named James Ashley thought that the name “Montana” (which he invented) would be a good fit for the territory that would eventually become Idaho, but going all the way east to the Continental Divide. However, other interests in congress overruled him going instead with “Idaho” (also probably a made up name, incidentally) and so Ashley (supposedly) retaliated by moving the border west to the Bitterroots, giving a huge chunk of Idaho to the territory that ultimately would be called Montana (despite really being only somewhat mountainous.)
The backstory, though, is that the people in that part of Montana really didn’t want to be in Idaho because then (as now) it was nearly impossible to get to Boise from there. Camps from both present-day Idaho and Montana were lobbying to have the land between the CD and the Bitterroots, but Idaho really had its act together better at that point and plus the boundary between Oregon and Dakota territory from which the two smaller territories had been carved was at the CD. Congressman Ashley’s pet name getting snubbed might not have been the decisive factor in moving the border, but it seems to have been one of them.
I’m sure the book must be a better source, but for the casual “geography fan,” How The States Got Their Shapes was worth the time it took to watch.
I love “North America east of Montreal” in general, though I’ve never been there – it all seems marvellously, insanely complicated.
The ski resorts of southern Utah are closer to Los Angeles than the ski resorts of Northern California are.
It is quite complex. Borders cut all over the place, including right through the middle of cities. On the US side, it’s pretty common to spend parts of the day in three or four different states without thinking much about it. You live in Connecticut and drive to see your sister in Massachusetts, who invited all of her New York in-laws. All of you then go to an amusement park in New Hampshire. On the way back, you make a wrong turn and pass a “Welcome to Maine” sign. Welcome to the East Coast.
The East Coast is also the place where forgetting to get off the subway at the right stop or turning left at McDonalds instead of right can mean a parole violation. Why did they put the state line there?
A lot of the major US east coast cities are port and river towns, such as NYC, Philadelphia, and DC where the river, or some part of the river, constitutes the state line. Philadelphia, as it is legally defined, sits right up against the Delaware River. The city limits to the east is the same line as the Pennsylvania/New Jersey state line. Of course, there was all of this NJ land right across, and so naturally people started building over there too and created Camden, NJ. A similar thing happened with NYC and Newark, NJ.
The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge (between DC and Arlington) crosses that island, although there are no offramps to it. So you can get to the island temporarily by crossing that bridge.
As far as I can tell, the main channel of the Potomac goes between this island and the main part of DC. Most river borders go down the main channel, so one would normally expect this island to be in Virginia. The reason it’s not is that the Maryland-Virginia border goes along the Virginia shore of the Potomac[sup]1[/sup]. DC comes from land donated by Maryland, so it also owns the entire river. Thus DC also owns Columbia Island which is separated from VA by just a narrow channel.
If you want an international example of an island only accessible through another country, check out Campobello Island in New Brunswick. In order to drive there, you have to take a bridge from Lubec, Maine (there’s also a seasonal ferry from elsewhere in NB.)
Anyone who likes exclaves, check out Baarle, Belgium/Netherlands for a real mindbending experience.
There’s lots of other exclaves out there, but perhaps my favorite is Jungholz Austria. It’s completely surrounded by Germany except at a single point on top of a mountain where it touches the rest of Austria.
[sup]1[/sup] The shore at the time the border was surveyed, which probably was a couple centuries ago. I expect it may have changed somewhat since then.
There are place in New England, especially Massachusetts where you can be within a 90 minute drive of all 6 New England states (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont). I am not quite sure where the epicenter is but it is probably somewhere in the Worcester, MA area. I can be in 4 states (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut or New Hampshire) without breaking a sweat in under an hour if I drive to the nearest border and I am not in the best location for that type of thing. Maine and Vermont only take a little bit longer.
I wonder what the most states you can hit by car consistently in under 4 hours is? Four states is easy in several parts of the country including the obvious 4 Corners area but you are basically screwed after that because the Southwestern states are so huge.
I also wonder what which place in the lower 48 takes the most time to hit even one other state border at all. I suspect it is somewhere in the geographic center of Texas but I don’t know exactly where that is because it also depends on available roads.
I’ll nominate Nashville, Tennessee. It’s near the east-west middle of the state, and it’s a big city so interstate routes go through it. I think you could probably drive to both it’s eastern and westernmost points in two hours. Tennessee borders 8 other states, clockwise from the top, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri. Illinois, Indiana, South Carolina, and West Virginia might be within a two hour drive as well. Two hours might be stretching it for some of those, but I’m pretty sure 3 hours would do them all. If you want to stick to 2 hours you might have to move your starting point a bit east or west to get all the states on that side giving up the ones on the other.
No way. Bristol to Memphis is 500 miles.
With which country France has the longest border?
With Brazil, in French Guiana : 730 km Second longest is with Spain (620 km)
Probably Key West FL. Somewhere along the Rio Grand is also a possibility, assuming the border with Mexico does not count.
The Bronx is usually said to be the only borough of New York City located on the mainland. But that’s not entirely correct. Marble Hill is a small chunk of the borough of Manhattan located on the mainland and mostly surrounded by the Bronx. It was produced by a the Harlem Ship Canal first cutting off a small peninsula the north end of the Manhattan, and then the Harlem River north of it later being filled in to connect it to the Bronx.
So is Detroit.
The high points of 18 states plus DC are lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
Also, Phoenix is north of Dallas.
Yes – I’ve long argued that Staten Island really ought to be part of New Jersey. It’s separated from NJ only by the Arthur Kill and the Kill van Kull. The only thing physically connecting it to the rest of New York is the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which was an architectural marvel at the time because bit was so long. (The only other connection is the Staten Island Ferry). Staten Island is so remote from the city that it really does feel more like Suburban New Jersey. And it’s the only borough that lacks a subway.
Atlanta, Georgia is closer Chicago, Illinois than it is to Miami, Florida. It a fact that many people have a hard time with but measure it if you don’t believe me.
I’m not sure why these would be “oddities.”
Likewise, a lot of these facts only only “oddities” if one takes mercator projection literally and starts to think of the world as a flat rectangle.