New York gave Connecticut the panhandle in exchange for the Oblong, a strip of land along Connecticut’s western border that’s 60 miles long and less than 2 miles wide.
Connecticut also gave New York Fishers Island but never quite let it go:
What was that border like before Schengen? Were there fences and checkpoints everywhere, or were the enclaves generally considered special immigration zones and you only needed to go through customs and immigration if you wanted to travel to the main part of the neighboring country?
I think, geographically speaking, a 20 foot border is close enough to a single point. I doubt they meant that the village and the rest of Austria touch at a literal, zero dimensional point.
Go ahead and doubt, I’m just going by what Google maps shows.
According to Map-o-Meter, it is more like 60m.
Consistently I could probably do 6 with ease. Start around Philly, make sure to cut through a part of Jersey and end up in Harpers Ferry, WV. There’s a really small part of Virginia right after you cross the boarder on US 340. That would give PA, NJ, DE, MD, VA and WV, Google maps says around 2.5 hours. One could also add DC pretty easy as well.
If traffic was light one could probably make it from NY in around 4 hours. So, middle of the night and no accidents.
I tried adding a few other states, but none came in under 6 hours or so.
You could take a route that goes KY->IL->MO->AR->TN->MS that, legally, would take a little under 3 hours; if you sped a little all the way, you might be able to add AL just under the wire.
Using one of those mileage calculating websites I plotted a route that touched all six New England states (just the corners of two or three of them) in under six hours, driving the speed limit(s) in each state. I had less luck trying to find six other states I could get the same thing done.
I tried to find a shortest (both time and mileage) route that would get to each of the SEC capitals. It was up in the days to get done.
In some other thread I posed the challenge to find a spot in the Lower 48 that was the center of the greatest population without being for the entire country. See Center of population - Wikipedia and Mean center of the United States population - Wikipedia for related data.
It got me curious for here.
reachable at all in 4 hours From Detroit area
EASY: Ohio, Indiana,
Can barely reach: Illinois(Google search says Calumet City is exactly 4 hours), Pennsylvania, NY(through Canada)
Can’t quite get to: Kentucky,West Virginia.
So only 3, counting Michigan, in any single 4 hour drive from Detroit.
Either Michigan, Indiana, Illinois
or Michigan, Ohio, Penn.
Or Michigan, Ohio, Indiana
In my experience, Google maps are fine for roads, but pretty much crap for anything else.
Here’s a page on the Jungholz/Sorgschrofen boundary cross with far more detail than you’d ever want to know about it. They even quote the treaty defining the boundary in that area. It turns out the single point is at boundary marker 110 and is hardly difficult terrain, since those guys visited it with little problem (see pictures at bottom of page).
That was a quote from my post and not something that I wrote myself. I have never been there myself but the reports are that the people that live in the inner circle have very little infrastructure and no legal way to leave because there is no way for them to get the proper papers to make the repeated multiple-border journey. Trapping people inside of a series of enclaves is certainly one way of ensuring peace but I don’t think it would ever be one that I would elect for myself or my family.
I don’t think you actually looked at the article and the diagrams contained in it. It is just semi-concentric circles that provide no way for the people trapped in the inner ones to ever make it out. Their respective government cannot even provide services to them in any way.
You can hit the states of Kentucky, lllinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi easily in less than 4 hours.
Start in Wyckliffe KY, go over the Ohio River to Cairo IL, over the Mississippi River to Missouri, head South on I-55 to Arkansas, Memphis, and then Mississippi.
edit: (or what eshereal said)
There is probably route to take you through all six New England states in about 4 hours.
Maine=> NH => VT => MA => CT => RI
I would think there is a possible route to go from Vermont to Pennsylvania and getting MA, CT, NY and NJ in under 4 hours.
If you start in the north-western-most corner of Texas (there is a gravel road right there) you can pop into New Mexico, head on over to Oklahoma, near Boise City turn north into Colorado, then eventually cut over into Kansas, all in around two and a half hours. If you try to make Nebraska, the whole trip will run a bit over 300 miles, so you would have to average more than 75mph – not absolutely unthinkable in those wide-open spaces, but risky nonetheless.
Although I’ve lived in California all my life, it isn’t until very recently that I learned its border with Baja California doesn’t run due east and west, but hits the coast about 1/8 of one degree further south of where it starts on the outskirts of Yuma, AZ. This was done to include all of San Diego Bay in the U.S.; otherwise the border’s western end would have been just about even with Lindbergh Field, just north of the Bay.
On most maps, for example this one, this fact is fairly obvious (now that I know), but I’d always assumed it was either a result of the map projection, or an optical illusion caused by the fact that on many maps, the north-south axis is tilted a bit clockwise, in order to fit the largest possible scale map on a given size of paper, whereby the northern and southern borders do not run parallel with the top and bottom edges of the paper.
Possibly, but you’re likely to hit NYC traffic on your mad dash across the narrow part of NY and end up waiting a while.
Perhaps you could start in Philadelphia, cross the river to Camden, NJ, get on the New Jersey Turnpike (toll warning), and take that south to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Take I-95 to DC, following DC around the Inner Loop. You’ll go across Delaware and Maryland. A small slice of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge is technically DC due to the border shape, so you get that too. Continue on the Beltway into Virginia, getting off at the Dulles Toll Road (toll warning). Keep on going past the airport and the road turns into the Dulles Greenway (toll warning). Get off the Greenway in Leesburg, VA, get on VA-7 West and turn onto VA-9 West. Turn north onto the road to Harpers Ferry (I can’t remember its name), and cross the river. You’re in Harpers Ferry. Go hike the Appalachian Trail, it’s right downtown.
You can get right on VA-7 West right off the Capital Beltway at Tysons Corner, but if it’s rush hour, you’ll never make it out before doomsday. Trust me.
Another route could be to start in Delaware, drive to Camden, NJ, cross the river to Philadelphia, then follow the Penna Turnpike (toll warning) across Pennsylvania Dutch Country, getting off at Gettysburg and going south on US 15. US 15 drops you into Maryland, and eventually Leesburg, VA (continue as above). Unfortunately, you miss DC with this route.
What about Canadian provinces? Most of their shapes and sizes don’t work too well with this idea, but let’s try. You could start in Borden, PEI, cross the Confederation Bridge to New Brunswick, and dip down across the border to Nova Scotia. That give you three. You might be able to turn right around and get back on the Trans-Canadian highway to make a mad dash for Quebec. Tabarnac!
Growing up in WV, I learned that WV is the most northern of the southern states, the most southern of the northern states, the most eastern of the western states and the most western of the eastern states. Its easternmost tip is the same longitude as Rochester, NY; its westernmost the same as Port Huron, MI; its southernmost farther south than Richmond, VA; and its northernmost farther north than Pittsburgh, PA.
I reckon the most western of the eastern states is Florida…