At the far western end of the Oklahoma panhandle, why does it not extend to the same longitude as the NM/TX border, but stops about 2 miles east of there?
This causes NM to have a small “extension” of 2 miles to the east in the NE part of the state toward the OK panhandle.
Very odd as there seems to be nothing there except a short stretch of highways 56/64 and (further north) 410.
As usual with boundary jags, the problem was surveyor error. The surveyors who surveyed the Texas-New Mexico boundary in 1859 did a horrible job, and set it well too far to the west.
The Oklahoma-New Mexico boundary was surveyed much later (I can’t find the exact year). In 1859 New Mexico was a territory and the Oklahoma Panhandle was “No Man’s Land”, not organized in any way, so there was no urgency about boundaries. When surveyors were finally appointed in I believe the 1890’s, they did a better job and got the boundary much closer to the 103rd meridian. Hence the boundary jag at the left bottom of the Panhandle.
Why use lat & long anyway? How about using rivers and mountains and such instead? Seems a lot easier and self-evident on the ground to locate a natural boundary.
Also, New Mexico sued Texas over the error based on the legal theory that as a sovereign state, they never approved the line. SCOTUS ruled that at the time, New Mexico was a territory and as such, the Federal government approved the survey and that the approval carries over when New Mexico became a state.
You have to know where mountains and rivers and such are, first. Much of the West was largely uncharted when they started surveying boundaries. Plus, how do you define where a mountain begins and ends? And rivers tend to move after a while. (And sometimes people move them.)
The border was set by the Compromise of 1850. In 1845, Texas sought admission to the Union, and ceded its lands north of 36˚30’, the Missouri Compromise line. However, in 1850 the northern border of New Mexico territory was set at 37˚. The jog in the state line is the difference between the cession of land to New Mexico Territory between 103.5˚ and the Rio Grande, and the already-ceded unorganized territory in 1845 (at 103˚). I’m not sure why they used 103.5˚, but they did.
In 1857, the Kansas-Nebraska Act set the southern border of Kansas at 37˚, creating the"no-man’s land" which eventually became the Oklahoma Panhandle.
There is a great book called “How The States Got Their Shapes” by Mark Stein. This book confirms this explination
Rivers move, sometimes significantly. The eastern border of Arkansas moves every time the Mississippi river floods or there is an earthquake in the area. To deal with this, they’ve changed policies over the years so that if the river moves the border doesn’t necessarily move with it. There are now parts of Arkansas that you cant’ get to from Arkansas. You have to go across the river to Tennessee to get to them.
Also, when a lot of state borders were established, the area they encompassed wasn’t that well known. Pennsylvania, for example, said their border went perfectly straight out west. Virginia said that their border followed a particular river. When folks got out there and actually surveyed the land and followed the river, they found that the borders crossed. Basically, Pennsylvania’s version of the border said that what is now West Virginia’s northern panhandle didn’t exist, and the PA line went straight through to the Ohio river. Virginia’s version would have made West Virginia’s northern panhandle a big wide thing (and it probably wouldn’t have been called a panhandle). West Virginia has this narrow northern panhandle now because they basically split the territory down the middle to settle the dispute.
Maryland’s southern border also followed a river. They thought the river went basically due west, making Maryland about as wide as Pennsylvania. As soon as they started to survey it, the river made an alarming turn northward, and they were seriously concerned that the state would be completely pinched off to nothing as it approached the Pennsylvania border. Then it turned back southward again, leaving Maryland with this really thin western section that almost gets squeezed off to nothing in the middle of it. If you look at a map, you can see how much narrower Maryland is than they thought it would end up being. They thought it was basically going to end up square.
When they got to the midwest there were huge sections of land that hadn’t been adequately surveyed. It was easier just to pick arbitrary lines than to go out and try to find convenient natural boundaries for all of it. You also had some really large territories that did have natural boundaries, but were too big to be states. If you are going to arbitrarily cut a huge territory in half, the easiest way to do it is to draw a line down the middle. If you look at the Louisiana Purchase, for example, you can tell by the shape of it that its borders followed rivers. As it was divided up into states though you can see where they just arbitrarily drew some lines.
You’d think that arbitrarily drawing lines on a piece of paper so that they don’t overlap would be easy, but every state has stories like these about their boundaries. Even when they drew straight, arbitrary lines they couldn’t get it right. Pennsylvania and Maryland couldn’t manage to draw a line between them that they both agreed on. It took them so long to settle the dispute and at times it was so heated that when they did finally agree to what the border was going to be, they didn’t trust the local yahoos to survey it. Instead, they went and found the best surveyors and astronomers they could get (all the way from London) and had them come over and survey the border. You may have heard of them. Their names were Mason and Dixon, and hence the Mason-Dixon line that divides the North and South on the Eastern side of the US.
Divides, actually. The Louisiana Territory was the western drainage basin of the Mississippi River.
This is a great book, but to hijack this thread slightly, the following is not explained in the book.
Using Google, zoom as far as possible on the four corners of AZ, CO, NM, UT. Note the UT/CO border. It goes straight north for about 50 feet, thence it doglegs NNW for about 500 feet and then resumes its northward course. I can only assume it was a surveyor’s error that was let stand.
I don’t think this is the reason at the western edge of the panhandle because 0.5° would be a lot more than the 2 miles the panhandle is inset from the main NM border.
There’s something there. There seems to be a diamond shape (maybe a monument) at the point where the 4 states meet, cars parked around it and a road leading to it from US Hwy 160. All in an otherwise very empty region.
Edited: StreetView shows a sign saying “The Navajo Nation Four Corners Monument Tribal Parks USA”
There’s something there. There seems to be a diamond shape (maybe a monument) at the point where the 4 states meet, cars parked around it and a road leading to it from US Hwy 160. All in an otherwise very empty region.
Nope. The Boundary Act of 1850, part of the Compromise of 1850, set the Texas-New Mexico boundary at 103 degrees. The TX-NM and OK-NM boundaries should be a single straight line. They aren’t because of surveyor error.
I misread this post and thought you were talking about the OK/NM/TX corner. When I zoomed in on that, I saw another weird jog. The NM/OK border starting north from the TX line goes almost north for about 50 feet, then bends northeast. It heads north, then very slightly bends northwest just north of NM 456 / OK 325 before heading north again for the CO line. Just west of the CO/OK/NM intersection, the CO/OK line has a little bend.
I don’t know why this is interesting, but I’m dying to know what went on there. Did the surveyors knock off for lunch, throw back a little too much whiskey, and start up on the wrong heading?
The states of Ohio and Kentucky disagreed over where within the river the border existed, a case that went to the US Supreme Court in 1980. Ohio had argued that the border was in the middle of the river. Kentucky argued that it was the northern edge of the river. In reading the text of their judgement, I see that the justices refer to similar lawsuits between other states over other river borders – perhaps every other river border between US States.
Etc., etc., etc…
The border in question runs dead north south, just offset a couple miles west.
Determination of longitude required a good clock. The two mile error on the TX/NM border amounts to a time error of about 7 seconds, which was not too shabby for a portable clock in those days. This would have had to be carried by horse from a point of known longitude…a rough trip that might take days or weeks. Any error in the value of the "known’ longitude would be another source of error (which could possibly cancel some of the clock error if you were lucky)
Years later, when the OK/NM border was surveyed, better clocks were available, including telegraph lines that could transfer a time hack long distances at near the speed of light.
Nonsense, it is a Pac Man breeding ground.
Anyone else think it’s odd that Street view people evidently drove PART WAY up the road, but not all the way around the 4 corners? Is it just something that Google hasn’t updated yet?