Yes, but the international border is different. There’s actually a commission, the International Boundary Commission, whose job it is to maintain a 6 meter clear buffer (3 meters on each side) along the border. This buffer and the Commission are mandated by a 100-year-old treaty.
There’s a case in Blaine WA where a retired couple built a retaining wall 1 meter too far north and the Commission got on their case about it. Apparently, the whole situation has gotten political and the US Commissioner has been fired by President Bush for trying to enforce the treaty. link to newspaper article
The correct (or necessary) postal address was always just “123 Colophon’s Street, (Tiny Town if needed for clarification,) Post Town, Postcode”. Royal Mail FAQs:
Granted, figuring out which post town is the correct one when faced with a garbled address is a bit of a minefield, and it can be easier to put a known county than risk it going to the wrong place. And knowing if the line between street and post town is necessary isn’t obvious, either. Although when I lived at ‘3 The Street’, it seemed pretty obvious that it was needed.
Good point, GorillaMan. I think the Royal Mail guidelines changed fairly recently (say the last 20 years), and of course in the days before postcodes the address would have needed to include “Surrey”. In practice, most people still tend to include the county when the Post Town is fairly small and obscure. In theory, of course, just the house number and the postcode ought to be enough…
By the way, back on topic, here’s a story about a hotel that sits right on the border between France and Switzerland.
Really? I’d have thought that irrespective of the presence of the postcode, giving the correct post town would be enough to accurately identify the location, without resorting to county names. Indeed, I presume post towns were the pre-postcode way of avoiding ambiguities including (but not limited to) cross-border locations and boundary changes.
Well, since we’re talking about Switzerland and World War II in another current GQ thread, I’ll cross-pollinate and tell this story about a village on the French/Swiss border, St. Gingolph, with the border going right through the middle of it. I went there with my wife a couple of years ago. They have a charming tiny museum showing the history of boat navigation on the lake. My wife was keen on setting foot in France, but there was a customs guy sitting in a booth in the middle of the main street, and my wife had left her passport at the house, so I made a quick U-turn, we parked in Switzerland and walked along the sidewalk into France.
St. Gingolph is a prettly little town on the Lake of Geneva (Lac Leman), but it was the scene of a minor drama in World War II (my recollections come from a fictionalized account but I belive it’s pretty close.) In the summer of 1944 the French Resistance was doing its usual pestering of the Germans around St. Gingolph. They decide to attack the German guards at the border post in St. Gingolph while most Germans are supposed to be eating their lunch on a small restaurant on the lake waterfront. But one of the young Resistance fighters runs into two German soldiers while he’s sneaking into the town; he panics and shoots the Germans. The other Germans leave their lunch and come running. Minor street fight with several deaths and the resistance fighters retreat back to their hideout.
After this, the mayor of St. Gingolph (Switzerland) is afraid that the Germans are going to come back in force and start harassing some of his French neighbours so he smuggles some of the French across the border into Switzerland. A small number of the French village people elect to stay in their part of town. More German troops arrive and start burning the town (but supposedly the Swiss mayor negotiated with the Germans to avoid an international incident and indicated on a map where the Swiss houses where, so they only burned the French part of town.) Several French people (men and women shopkeepers, the village priest), who didn’t want to go into hiding in Switzerland, are taken by the Germans as hostages and shot dead. The French town burned for about 3 days while the Swiss stood watch on the other side to make sure the fire didn’t spread to the Swiss part of the village.
Morale: if you live on an international border, choose your side wisely!
Well, if you built your house in the Yaak in Lincoln County, Montana, it could be there for 100 years before anyone knew, and I seriously doubt anyone is bothering to check with the International Boundary Commission. I don’t know how it (the Commission) would even begin to maintain a six meter buffer all the way along a 5500 mile open border. The question of more relevance would be who you paid taxes to, although many people in that area of Montana don’t bother to do that, either.
In Sumas (the next crossing east of Blaine in Washington) you can drive right up to the border and take a sharp right and you are on a paved road in Sumas that runs THISCLOSE along the border. It may be, however, that the road pre-dates the Border Commission and they are not authorized to move pre-existing roads or structures.
There is a city on the Alberta/Saskachewan boarder with this issue:Lloydminster
*'The provincial border runs north to south, falling directly on 50th Avenue (Meridian Avenue) in the centre of Lloydminster. Addresses east of 50th Avenue are considered to be in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan and addresses west of 50th Avenue are considered to be in Lloydminster, Alberta.
Lloydminster’s unique situation is reflected in other legal matters, including its time zone. Alberta law requires the use of daylight saving time, while Saskatchewan does not observe daylight saving time. Lloydminster’s charter allows it to follow Alberta’s use of daylight saving time on both sides of the provincial border; this places the city in the Mountain Standard Time Zone and synchronizes clocks with those of Alberta. Lloydminster, however, was not exempted from recent anti-smoking legislation passed by Saskatchewan’s legislature. Lloydminster follows the Saskatchewan schedule when voting in municipal elections.'*
ETA this interesting bit: ‘Lloydminster’s bi-provincial status has resulted in special provisions regarding provincial taxation within the city limits. The Saskatchewan side of the city is exempt from that province’s sales tax, preventing businesses located there from being placed at a disadvantage relative to businesses in Alberta, which has no provincial sales tax. There is no exemption for provincial income tax, which is based solely on the taxpayer’s province of residence.’
I suppose maintaining a six metre buffer on open land just involves leaving it open Take a look at this, though, which is one small chunk of the straight line cut through the vegetation, marking the British Columbia-Washington border. Using Google Earth, it’s possible to track the border for long distances even through the low-resolution sections due to the line which has been cleared.
That’s essentially it. And it’s not that you can’t put up things like fences or whatever in the buffer, you just need to apply for permission. I’m sure that the local authorities who built the roads in that buffer (as mentioned upthread) applied for and received permission. The problem with the retaining wall in Blaine is that they built it without permission.
I think I remember seeing that road on some late night show where they rounded up some Canadians to take them to the ‘free land of America’. They ran across the road then celebrated. Very silly, but it’s what I remember when US/Canadian relations come up on the Dope.
Kansas City, KS/NE is in the same situation, and I’ve always wondered how they deal with law enforcement. I would imagine each side of the state line deals with its own taxes and laws, but it seems really odd to have one city in two states. I live in a metro area that includes Kentucky and Indiana, but we have a natural boundary: the Ohio river.
I believe you mean Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. And it isn’t the same situation: Kansas City MO and Kansas City KS are two different cities, with separate municipal administrations, while Lloydminster, while straddling the Saskatchewan/Alberta border, only has a single administration.
According to the Wikipedia article linked to in EmAnJ, Flin Flon, Manitoba is in the same situation, with a very small portion located in Saskatchewan, but under the jurisdiction of the municipality nevertheless. I wasn’t aware of that last one.
Similarly, Canusa Street in Stanstead, Quebec is situated just centimetres north of the border. The houses on the south side of the street are in the US, while the houses on the north side are in Canada. It’s quite interesting.
Because Lincoln is nowhere near Alberta or any international borders at all, is why not. It’s a very nice little town in a very nice-looking region, which is how you know: Most of the parts of Montana near Alberta are pretty flat.
I saw that, too. There is no direct access to those houses on US soil from the US. You have to enter Canada first, and then drive to your house on US soil. It also appears that they would have to do their shopping in Canadian stores. I didn’t see what looked like a commercial district that was accessible to them in the US. Very interesting arrangements, indeed.
Here’s an article about state line disputes that have arisen due to the implementation of GPS locating and the creation of GIS databases by local and state governments:
I remember this, because a number of people who thought they lived in Rhode Island turned out to actually be in Connecticut, when the original surveys were corrected with modern technology in 2002.
I remember driving through a village on the Belgium / Luxembourg border where the border runs down the middle of the high street. Because road fuel is cheaper in Luxembourg than in Belgium, all the filling stations are on the Luxembourg side of the street.
Take a look at