The closest we come to a border-to-border straight line is the fact that the border between the provinces and territories is a straight border line (the 60th parallel) from Hudson Bay all the way to the Alaska Panhandle.
Zeldar, almost every variation in what’s supposed to be a “straight line” border between states can be ascribed to “bad surveying” (or, often, “drunk surveying.”) Particularly with the older states, the original title or legislation usually says something like the border is at 36’30" (in the case of the Kentucky/Tennessee border.) Then the surveyors went out and measured the first 10 miles of the border. They’re a little off. Then another set of surveyors start at the first end point and the mistake compounds itself. If you look at a map of the Kentucky/Tennessee border in high enough detail, you’ll see the actual boundary isn’t razor-straight; it meanders a little here and there.
The jog in the east-west border came as part of the Jackson Purchase, which added far western Kentucky (west of the Tennessee River) to the rest of the state in 1818. Note that the jog actually starts east of the Cumberland River and goes north about a mile, then west to the Tennessee River, then south along the river channel, then straight east-west after that. I make the north/south jog to be somewhere around 7 miles, the difference from the pre-1818 surveys and the new surveys after Jackson’s purchase.
Thanks, kunilou, and what you say about old surveying methods, and their results, is shown with much clarirty at DCP: United States : Tennessee (and other states with borders along integer degree lines) where the “degree confluences” along the borders vary considerably back and forth across state lines.
Your version of how the TN-KY line became like it is, is like others I have seen and it’s easy enough to accept that as a good approximation of the facts. As I said, I have yet to see any “official” statements of that sort. It’s probably been with the advent of GPS precision that it even became an issue.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to observe that with the possible exception of Pennsylvania, virtually none of the Eastern states have more than two borders that are anywhere near a “straight line” and that all those that do are out west. (There’s another current thread focusing on that notion.)
Not long ago I read something about how Alabama’s borders were determined and it sounds almost as fanciful as the ones where the layout of somebody’s property is determined by trees, streams, rock formations and other such things that probably no longer exist.
Reminds me of a situation where buddy was giving me directions to his place out some distance in the country. He told me to look for the old rusted out 57 Ford and take the next left. How’s that for ad hoc directions? 
Actually, taking his point that he was looking for a border-to-border or ocean-to-ocean line bisecting the U.S. on a north-south axis, Canada had the closest thing to one for the first 132 years of its existence: the straight-line Manitoba-Saskatchewan border was extended north of 60 to forn the border between the NWT’s Districts of Mackenzie and Keewatin, terminating only where Queen Maud Gulf marks the end of continental North America (though admittedly the Arctic Archipelago lies athwart any putative continuation of the line across the islands). But as a single straight line crossing the continental bulk of Canada, it seems to qualify.
The issue, of course, is that with the creation of Nunavut in 1999, it terminates well short of Queen Maud Gulf, with the Mackenzie-Nunavut border extending westward to include most of the Arctic coast and its hinterlands in Nunavut.
“virtually” gives you some wriggle room, but Rhode Island has one complete straight-line border and large portions of the two adjacent sides as straight lines. And before you go on about Western states, please note that some of those sides that look like single straight lines on your map really aren’t.
Point conceded on Rhode Island.
And as long as “mostly” is added as a way of allowing straight-line borders to be counted, maybe I should be saying these could be counted among the Eastern states:
Indiana
Connecticut
Ohio
Arkansas
As for the straight line nature of borders in general, I point again to the
http://www.confluence.org/ site for details.
Iowa is easily larger than Pennsilvania.
Minnesota has more water area (excluding Lake Superior) than Hawaii has land area.
Technically, it’s not a straight line, though. From the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan:
These “correction lines” form a stairstep. The steps are so slight that it’s just easier to draw a straight line on a map, unless you’re looking at a close up. But you can use Google Maps for a close-up look at the stairsteps forming the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border–do a Google Map search on “Kirkella, Manitoba” (or any other town in either province located close to the border), and zoom out slowly. You’ll see the border and the stairsteps.
You’re not the first to make that mistake, by the way–my high school geography teacher got me with the “Is the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border a straight line?” question many years ago.
Nice! Hope our library has a copy.
According to Google Maps, Portland is 636 miles from San Francisco.
This does, however, give Canada a Four Corners just like the US one except not as hospitable climate (and yes, I’m aware of the climate at the US Four Corners) and not nearly as accessible.
Article on a visit to the Canadian Four Corners
Website of a fishing lodge close to the Canadian Four Corners
Atlanta is closer to Boston than Miami is to San Juan.
El Paso is closer to San Diego than it is to Houston.
Just a dumb joke from an old episode of “Garfield & Friends.” Carry on…
Oddly enough the Jeopardy! Celebrity Invitational rerun this week had a clue “the only state name ending in “g”” and nobody got it.
Damn. Air miles? I was using road. I think. (Some other site than Google Maps; hard to read.)
NM