A friend found an interesting shape to the border between West Virginia and Ohio, in the Ohio river outside of Wellsville OH. It is at 40.59657 N and 80.654433 W. Or click here to see it in Google Maps.
I can think of several reasons why the border does not go down the middle of the river. But why would it do that weird hook-shaped curve?
Here’s a description of West Virginia’s borders. I don’t think it answers your question, but it might:
http://www.wvculture.org/History/government/wvboundaries.html
The boundary follows the north shore of the Ohio River as it was when the boundary was first surveyed. There is a lock and dam downstream from there (as there is at regular intervals along the Ohio River), which holds back the water so that it’s more easily navigated, and so that the river is wider than it was back more than 200 years ago.
(The Ohio River is a major transportation route, particularly for coal in barges, and Pittsburgh is a port city despite being so far inland.)
(And this is a picture of another lock and dam on the same river.)
Virginia’s original charter set its boundary as the far shore of the Ohio river, not it’s middle. So the weird zigs and zags represent the contour of the original western shore of the river. The bit you’re looking was probably a small sandbar/peninsula that’s since been washed away.
From the above link:
Possibly a sandbar in the river at the time the border was drawn.
Makes perfect sense, NOW. Thanks!
The sandbar may still be there. As I explained, because the Ohio River is held back by a series of dams, it’s deeper now than it was when the boundary was drawn, and the sandbar may still be there under the surface.
It doesn’t go down the middle of the river basically because Virginia claimed the river, and there really wasn’t anyone on the other side of the river to fight them for it at the time.
Virginia also originally claimed land all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, but that didn’t last long.
When the Virginia border was originally drawn, the land where that Z is now was claimed by both Pennsylvania and Virginia. Pennsylvania said that their border went due west. There was none of that silly panhandle stuff in their definition of the border. Virginia claimed not only the existing northern panhandle of WV, but also claimed Pittsburgh and much of the land surrounding it. You’d think that a couple of reasonably intelligent guys could get together and make sure their lines didn’t overlap before they drew them, but this sort of thing was surprisingly common back then. They couldn’t even get a straight line like the line between PA and MD to agree with each other. MD said that the line was farther north (giving MD more territory) and PA said it was farther south (giving PA more territory). This dispute ended up being so heated that when they finally did agree on a line, they hired two English dudes named Mason and Dixon to survey it and make sure everyone knew which side of the line they were on (you’ve probably heard of their line, it’s kinda famous now).
Anyway, it didn’t take long for people to realize that the PA/VA borders overlapped, but since very few people lived out there, nobody really cared much, except of course for those few people who did live out there. Sometimes these folks got into rather heated debates, and sometimes these “debates” involved firearms and threats of death. Fun times. But, since these disputes involved very small numbers of people, the folks in the big cities who controlled the money didn’t pay much attention to them.
As more and more people started settling westward, the border disputes became more and more of an issue. Virginia and Pennsylvania finally got together and basically drew a vertical line down the middle of their disputed territory, creating the funny little skinny panhandle that is now on the top of WV. Virginia got Wheeling, which was then a big city, and Pennsylvania got Fort Pitt, so both were happy (sorta). Your little Z ended up on the Virginia side of things.
The little town I live in (not far from Gettysburg) originally got its land grant from Lord Baltimore in Maryland. After the border dispute between PA and MD was settled, we ended up on the PA side of the line.