I grew up in the northern panhandle of WV and have heard this story many times. The other commonly believed story is that the corner is where Mason and Dixon ran into hostile indians and had to turn north to avoid them. Of course, neither of these commonly believed theories is actually true.
The reality is that when VA and PA formed as states, the definition of their borders overlapped. Pennsylvania’s version of the map basically went straight along the Mason Dixon line to the Ohio River. This conflicted with Virginia’s version of the map, which had Virginia owning a huge chunk that went all the way up to the Allegheny River and included Fort Pitt (which later became Pittsburgh) and quite a bit of land around it. The odd shape you see now is basically a compromise between the two.
This map shows what Virginia called the District of West Augusta: http://www.rootsweb.com/~vagenweb/va-pa-border.jpg
It has the modern day border between PA and WV drawn on it so that you can see how the district ended up being split between the two states.
As long as we’re on Pennsylvania, we might also mention the “Erie Triangle”. Over on the west end of the state, the state juts up above the straight NY border to give PA frontage on Lake Erie. If the NY border had continued on, it would have met Ohio and Lake Erie at very nearly the same point, and PA would have been screwed out of lakefront. That wasn’t the only consideration - there were competing state charters for the area. But congress awarded it to PA for that reason in 1792 and made them pay $0.75/acre for it:
I mentioned this earlier. Look at a sufficiently detailed map of Colorado, at Montrose county, south of route 90, the area southwest of Bedrock, CO. The Utah border along the southern part of the county is angled slightly, becoming a straight north/south line again south of the county. In all, it indents the state by at most a mile. On one of the earlier threads, I was guessing that this was probably another surveyor’s error, and somebody else remembered that it was, but we didn’t have any cites to back it up.
Let’s see if this works. You can clearly see it in google maps:
I should think that the Cheasapeake was regarded as a prime navigational tool and food source as opposed to an obstacle and I think that especially a few centuries ago centering your colony around was far from a bad idea. I’d be willing to bet that water navigation was faster than overland when Maryland was being colonized.
And Philadelphia-Camden is still a major seaport-without-the-sea by the by. It appears that Delaware didn’t break off from PA until 1776, at which time the British had control of the area through much of the war. Not sure if Delaware did attempt (assuming it was possible at a practical level) collecting taxes on Delaware River traffic during the Articles of Confederation period, but with the advent of the current US Constitution that’d be considered a barrier to interstate commerce in all likelihood; keep in mind that DE & PA were the first two states to ratify (and NJ third) so presumably the powers that be in this area at the time were very positive about inter-state cooperation.
Something that’s always puzzled me is the misalignment between Indiana’s and Ohio’s northern borders. My WAG is that Indiana’s border was bumped up 5 miles in order to give the state a greater Lake Michigan shoreline.
Similarly, the Revillagigedo Archipelago is designated as part of the municipality of Manzanillo in the state of Colima in Mexico. They are 720 and 970 km west of Manzanillo, but only 386 km south of Baja California.
Well, the city of Houstin, Texas is a major seaport located (IIRC) 60 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. That said, Texas has plenty of coastline otherwise, so it doesn’t really count.
Near the bottom of the page I just linked to, there’s a map of the area with the legend, “Click to draw/clear city borders.” Try it - you’ll see that the border has all kinds of odd narrowings and protuberances. I have heard the strange shape is the result of an annexing spree the city went on after World War II.
The odd shape creates some interesting problems. For example, the neighboring city of El Cerrito (where I live) has street called Moeser that goes straight up a steep hill and over a ridge, where it dead-ends. Past the end of Moeser is Wildcat Canyon, which is undeveloped parkland. The whole street is in El Cerrito except for a small part on the other side of the ridge, which (along with a couple of side streets) is in Richmond. For years the few Richmond residents at the end of Moeser got their police and fire protection from Richmond, even though Richmond cops and firefighters had to go a fair distance through El Cerrito to get to them. Eventually a deal was worked out where the city of Richmond pays El Cerrito to protect those people and their homes.
Which presents the interesting situation that Pennsylvania comes within a hair’s breadth of being, like New York, a state through which one must pass in order to travel on land from one major part of the U.S. to another. The escape clause, of course, is the Delaware Memorial Bridge, linking Wilmington with New Jersey.
Has nobody mentioned Ireland before? The choice of counties which form Northern Ireland almost completely severed the north-west, Donegal, from the rest of the republic. http://www.ireland-map.co.uk/map-of-northern-ireland.htm
If you wan a city with weird protuberances, try Rochester, N.Y.
There are two weird pseudopods thrown out to east and west, and there’s a weird one-street-wide band running north to Durand-Eastman Park, cutting the town of Irondequoit into two parts.
The two east-west pseudopods follow the original outline of the Erie canal, which used to run right through downtown Rochster (crossing the Genesee River on its own bridge, which still exits by the Library), and which really built the city. Ages ago it was discontinued. The canal , now he New York State Barge Cana;, was rerouted far south of the City, but the Rochester Corporate boundary still shows where it used to run.
as for the Northern Pseudopod, I figure that they thought that if the City of Rochester was going to own Durand-Eastman Park, they’d bettere b connected to it directly, even if that meant an absurdly thin section of city that itself cut another town into two parts.
That looks to me like they already had the land divided up into sections, and didn’t want the county line to divide sections. The county is, in effect, pixelated.
A border is almost always the middle of the river (typically the thalweg) or the high water mark. That area is below the high water mark and as a consequence you have this case. A similar but not identical sort of boundary dispute between New Jersey and New York (ownership of land vs ownership of the river) created a state boundary on Ellis Island.
Lesson behind the Northwest Angle is don’t make treaties based on locations before you determine if the locations exist (inaccurate cartography)
Ahhh, the Southwick Jog. A compromise based on bad surveying. Seem like bad surveying answers a lot of these.
Not sure what you mean here. The Hudson does separate New Jersey from New York. When Britain got control of New Netherland after the Anglo-Dutch War,the east side of the Hudson became New York and the west side became New Jersey. This map shows you why Massachusetts and Connecticut do not extend to the Hudson - it was already claimed by the Dutch at the time. The real question is why doesn’t New Jersey extend further north than it does. Vermont is a whole different kettle of fish to discuss.
Actually the original survey is kept but it is dependent on if the river changes course naturally or artificially. The Country Club Dispute is the most famous example of this but it is not unique. Carter Lake, IA is on the “wrong” side of the Missouri River. See that oxbow lake? That’s the original (and current) border kept in place when the Big Mo cut through its meander.
I don’t know whether this has been mentioned in the thread: I have a book called “How the States Got Their Shapes,” by Mark Stein. It answers all the questions about the U.S. states.
I enjoyed Stein’s book, and a follow-up book, How the States Got Their Shapes Too: The People Behind the Borderlines, that tells the human stories of some of the land disputes. But it bothers me that he somehow completely misses any mention of the Washington Meridian.
Boundaries of the United States and the several states is a US Geological Survey book available as a PDF here. Older versions can be found on archive.org or Google Books.
A somewhat more scholarly (still quite readable) book is *American Boundaries: The Nation, the States, the Rectangular Survey *
by Bill Hubbard Jr.
