I was looking at an electoral map (this one, if ya gotta know), and I wound up thinking about the panhandle border between Colorado and Nebraska. It appears there is some conflict about which states are going to maintain their square borders and which states are going to get dented to accommodate this. Clearly, ISTM, Colorado is allowed to be all but perfectly square, while Nebraska gets to be a panhandle state, but otherwise pretty square. Sorta.
If Nebraska had ‘won’, Colorado would look something like this:
Most of the state of New Mexico appears to be an intrusion on Texas, and you don’t mess with Texas. So there’s that. Texas took it out on Oklahoma, so things are sorta tense, but balanced.
Wyoming overlaps Utah. Montana, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas and especially Wyoming all have ‘square’ borders, for different values of "square’.
I am sure there are more of these stories than I know- George Washington Himself was a land surveyor, and a whole lotta land deals have gone down since then. For instance, what did Arkansas do to deserve giving up a chunk to Missouri?
I’m sure there are a zillion of these stories if one looks closely enough.
The USA, Canada and Australia are the only significant countries in the world where internal political boundaries are drawn geometrically. In every other country, internal units evolved accorfding to geographical, sociological or ethnic forces that prevailed historically. (A few straight lines can be found in a few countries, but they are exceptional, and almost never latitudinal or longitudinal.)
I think that’s a bit simplified (the Line of Demarcation, anyone?) but the gist of your comment is correct. The new worlds (including Australia and Africa) were so vast and so politically charged that there wasn’t time for slow social/civil interaction to create more natural divisions.
I know a lot of stories and details about the evolution of the states’ borders, mostly the quirks and errors (I live near Granby Notch, and wrote a lengthy paper about California’s potentially disastrous southeastern point marker) - but I am looking forward to this book. Even got a nice used copy, Prime, for $5.
Briefly elaborate, if you please. Does it have anything to do with the fact that the point in question is in the middle of a river known for meandering?
But even in Aus, the internal internal boundries are drawn geographically and sociologically – I’m thinking of the county boundries in Michagan. We have nothing like that.
Naturally the book’s a lot pithier in parts and more detailed in others than the TV show, which required visual filler, but both are quite good. One of the things you learn is how with many of the states the bases for eventual border decisions were “pre set” as it were by decisions taken long before and far away by people who weren’t there.
There’s sometimes interesting stories involving international borders. Consider The Gambia and Senegal. The Gambia is a narrow area centered on the river of that name and is surrounded by Senegal except on the ocean. The western parts of the boundary are straight lines, while the rest is squiggly. Why the squiggly parts?
The squiggly parts are set at a specific distance from the river, 10 miles, I think. But they don’t go all the way to the source of the river, just to the highest point of navigation. Why that? The story goes that that was the distance the largest cannon could fire from British warships (or perhaps one specific warship) at the time the border was set.
Yeah–off the top of my head I believe Mexico has some straight lines, and so do Libya and Jordan–though maybe they’re not significant.
But yes, clearly, the western U.S. is like someone cutting up a cake. Personally, I think North and South Dakota ought to just stop with the silly pretense and admit they’re actually one state. Then Puerto Rico could get statehood, and we still have an even 50. Everybody wins.
Heck ever since North Idaho left the mountain time zone for the pacific time zone to be more in line with where the economic realities and loyalties are, Idaho has been half way to splitting into North and South Idaho for sometime now.
I can see the mini-series title now, “The Blue and The Green” starring Sam Elliot and Tom Selleck