I could swear I have asked this or a very similar question before but I have been unable to locate whatever old thread it may have been in.
Are there places on the maps of currently defined political areas (countries, counties, states, provinces or whatever) where more than four such entities meet at a point? The simplest example I know of involving four entities would be the Four Corners in the US Southwest where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meet. My atlas even says that this point is the only place in the US where that happens.
If you know where five or more political areas meet, please provide a link to a map that shows it.
If you know about some other thread(s) dealing with this and related issues, please identify it/them.
Good example of the sort I’m curious about. It does seem reasonable that something like pie slices will be involved, or else some strange gerrymandering. Africa, Europe and Asia seem most likely to have countries doing this kind of thing, and maybe counties in those states (or countries) where there are many counties to be considered. Finding decent and up-to-date county maps might be a chore, too.
Have a look at the Yahoo Groups called BoundaryPoint and BorderPoint, which are related to this type of query. Search their archives for “quadripoint” or “quintipoint”.
AFAIK there are no international-level “quadripoints” or higher.
Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia come very close to meeting in the Zambezi river, but there is a short border between (IIRC) Botswana and Zambia, thus separating the other two.
There used to be an international quadripoint in the Benelux region, between Belgium, Germany, Holland and a region called Moresnet, which later was incorporated into Belgium.
Thanks, Colophon. I was unfamiliar with the official names of these concepts and was thus unable to look them up by way of their names. This appears to be pretty definitive.
Actually, the example you give has at least eight such political entities meeting: the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado; and the counties of Apache, San Juan (New Mexico), San Juan (Utah), and Montezuma. The number will probably be even higher if you count more fine-grained political areas, such as municipal districts and school districts.
The main river which runs from top left to bottom right is the Zambezi. (Both channels which lead off the bottom right and lower right of the picture are the Zambezi - it splits around a small island here.) The land above and to the right of the river is Zambia.
The river which enters the Zambezi from the upper left side of the picture is the Chobe River. The tongue of land between the two is part of Namibia.
The large chunk of land occupying the lower left quarter of the picture is split between Botswana, to the left, and Zimbabwe. The border runs roughly along a track that you can faintly see, running from the right-angle feature you can see in the yellowish scrub at left, then heading in a roughly 2-o’clock direction to meet the Zambezi just opposite the small inlet in the far bank.
So you can see that the border between Namibia and Botswana runs along the main channel of the Chobe river, which is the near side of the small island in its mouth. That meets up with the border running along the main channel of the Zambezi, at a point roughly in the horizontal centre of the photo. The alignment of the border coming in from the bottom left, across the land, seems to just miss intersecting it.
The Google Maps view is here. You can see that the first photo is taken looking roughly NW.
It’s a shame that the borders on Google Maps (choose Hybrid view) are so inaccurate for this part of the world, so they don’t help matters really.
Interesting alternative issue. I was hoping to find more than four entities of the same type and not overlapping entities that refer to the same pieces of land. I suppose the issue of how many different political entities apply to a specific piece of ground would also be a fun exercise. A bare minimum of city (or town), county, state and country just for starters.
Not quite the land boundary question we’re addressing, but I’m wondering if any of the internationally-recognized seabed claims in the North Sea produce a quadripoint or higher?
The claims in Antarctica are in abeyance due to the Antarctic Treaty. Unfortunate: it would be interesting to have land boundaries, even one point, between New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Chile, the U.K., and Norway.
I thought this was going to have something to do with the Four Color Map Theorem – that you never need more than 4 crayons to color a map (so no 2 countries touch with the same color). But I was wrong.
That’s an understandable expectation, but as I have read the theorem if adjacent areas meet only at a point the coloring issues doesn’t arise. So the “four corners” states that share borders need the color consideration, but the fourth one can have the same color as the one across the point from it and thus not cause an issue with requiring a fourth color. So, Arizona and Colorado could be the same color; or Utah and New Mexico could share one.
There’s a rock just off the south side of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge that might by the commons point between San Francisco, Marin, Solano, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties. I might have thrown one in by mistake, and don’t feel like finding it.
How many things come to a point at the North Pole? My maps have Canada (all three northern territories) coming to a point there, and the US (Alaska) just to its left. Do Russia and the other northern countries do the same?
I suspect you may be conflating two different points. My map shows that San Francisco, Marin, and Contra Costa Counties meet at or near that rock. But there’s also a point further north in the middle of the bay where Marin, Sonoma, Contra Costa, and Solano Counties meet. But that’s only four.
Four counties meeting is actually fairly common in the US. Many of the counties in north and central Texas are squares and often meet at four corners. There’s similar square counties in Iowa and Michigan (and probably other states) that do the same.
I should note that, while Canada’s claim to the the actual land territory of the northern islands is internationally recognized, our map-maker’s claims to all that ocean is regarded with some amusement.
I’m not sure it applies but there is a very odd piece of Afganistan that borders a couple of other countries.
I know this because long before Afganistan was in the news I used to stare at that spot on a wall map I had. After a time I began to think I should visit there, it must be a very curious valley. Maybe one day I will.
