Strange Maps: Border between Canada and USA
July 6, 2007
I’ve always been fascinated by maps. Don’t know if it’s a geek thing or not. I love finding “weird” things through maps, and now with Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, the world awaits me – sort of.
A treaty sets the western half of the border between Canada and the United States at the 49th Parallel. The border follows the 49th Parallel – actually a latitude coordinate – in a straight line from roughly north of Minneapolis, MN to all the way out just past Washington State into the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Once in the Strait, the boundary loops south and then west, so that Vancouver Island stays within Canada’s boundaries. Other than that, everything north of the 49th Parallel is Canada’s, and everything south of that is the United States’.
Simple? Not really.
In several places, the ruler-straight border creates strange mapping results. At least three practical enclaves /exclaves were created — little “islands” of property belonging to the United States but almost entirely surrounded by Canada and/or accessed only through Canada. (Well, Alaska lies north of the 49th Parallel, but, well, that’s different because, well, um, it didn’t become a state till much later, um, or it wasn’t part of the United States till after …)
The first and perhaps most well-known out of these exclaves is Point Roberts. Where the USA-Canada border reaches the Strait of Juan de Fuca west of Washington State, it actually crosses one more land peninsula jutting off the mainland north of Seattle before the border actually reaches the middle of the Strait.
Point Roberts, WA is a small community of just over 1,000 people a mere 22 miles south of Vancouver, BC. Over land, the only way to reach Point Roberts is through a single road from Canada. Of course, one can take a boat from Point Roberts to the rest of Washington State. There’s only one school for kindergarten through second grade students; older students must take the bus up into Canada, around the bay, and then back into Washington State. I think after 9/11 they had to take a ferry or boat to school, but then they were able to use the bus once again once border crossings were less chaotic.
Two other exclaves are caused by the razor-straight 49th Parallel, this time at the eastern end. The 49th Parallel border runs through (and actually begins its eastern end in) the Lake of the Woods, shared by the USA (Minnesota) and Canada (Manitoba and Ontario). But the 49th Parallel border actually skims two peninsulas jutting from Canada into the Lake of the Woods. As a result, a few square miles of unpopulated, forested land is owned by the USA, even though on the map it looks like it’s part of Canada. The larger one is named Elm Point; the other is unnamed.
Interestingly enough, when viewed via Google Map’s “Map” view, it looks like the 49th Parallel international border doesn’t cut through any peninsulas in the Lake of the Woods:
But switching to the “Hybrid” view shows a different story:
Ah-ha, the two enclaves (or exclaves, whatever) clearly show up in the hybrid view.
I can’t wrap this up unless I point out one more enclave / exclave: the Northwest Angle. Many years ago, the Canadian / USA border was set at the very northwestern tip of the Lake of the Woods, and then it would run due south to the 49th Parallel then directly west. Due to ignorance of geography by the early mappers and developers of the then-young United States, it was not realized till later that the border running south from the northwestern border of the lake would set apart a good-sized chunk of land from Canada. About 140 people live there, according to the 2000 Census. For a good idea of what life’s like there, read the book, In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien.
Enough for now! More later.
July 7, 2007 at 6:14 pm
cool! political geography can be a real hoot.
-a fellow map freak
September 6, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Great stuff! Never heard anything like it. I was in Vancouver recently and I didn’t hear anything about that first, most westerly one.
You don’t mention exactly why the US and Canada didn’t endeavour to resolve these border mapping errors once they had been discovered. Was the political situation too sensitive at the time so that the agreed 49th parallel rule could not be altered in any great way? Why not change in more modern times? Would this annoy the current inhabitants?
September 7, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Thanks, Donal! And good question. I had to look around, and then came across an excellent National Geographic article on Port Roberts. Link’s below, and I’m also reprinting the first paragraph which pretty much answers your questions:
Neatly drawing the border between Canada and the United States along the 49th parallel was a fine idea, except for one thing. When the line reached the ocean just south of Vancouver, it cut off a tiny lobe of Washington State, which was left hanging out into the Pacific all by itself. A few people almost immediately noticed that it would make more sense to assign this appendage to Canada, but somehow that never happened. Therefore, sometime in the 1850s the hardy residents of Point Roberts—Icelandic farmers and fishermen, cannery workers, and now a good number of retirees from as far away as Florida—began living on this five-square-mile fragment of the peninsula as if it were an island colony of some distant mother country. The scenery is gorgeous, and thanks to the guards manning the checkpoint on the border, life is ridiculously peaceful. But it is also riddled with inconvenience.
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0408/feature7/fulltext.html
November 18, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Interesting info, Josh. What about looking at how state lines were set? One I always wondered about was why Wisconsin, the northern part, is actually the UP of Michigan??? Why not leave it with Wisconsin?
And in MA, there’s a little bump in the border between MA and CT in western part, near Agawam…… makes one wonder….
January 12, 2009 at 12:41 am
There was a governor of Minnesota who tried to sell The Angle to Canada. I don’t know how serious of an attempt it was. Apparently that was his idea of how to solve a budget problem.
January 12, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Here’s a funny town for your border research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beebe_Plain,_Vermont
May 27, 2009 at 12:54 pm
dear proud geek,
is it possible to get your email address?
seems like you are really good in maps.
Recently i am working on a screenplay,,. its about a an indian girl who illigally crossed the vancouver border in a coal train to enter america. its a true story however, i am not sure on the details. thus,
i am struggling to understand the rout..
is it possible that i get some help from you?
pls knock me if you are willing to provide me with some suggestions..
thanks a bunch.
zeeshan
November 24, 2009 at 2:37 pm
cool map, but keep in mind that the climate in Northern California is MISERABLE!! I mean, I can handle park city in the dead of winter- but, by far the 2 coldest places I have ever been in my life are southern Chile & Northern California. After all Mark Twain did say “the coldest winter I have ever spent is a summer in san francisco”.
December 14, 2009 at 1:46 am
I recently seen part of this on History Channel series: The States.
Another odd border is the border of Kentucky.
The border was changed as a result of an earthquake causing a river to change it’s course and subsequently changing the border. In order to get to a part of Kentucky, you have to drive through another state. Google It!
February 2, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Your website is really interesting. There was a question about the northern most state of the lower 48 on “Are you smarter than a 5th grader”. We guessed it was Maine. We couldn’t figure out how Minnesota was the most northern point until we saw your map of Lake of the Woods where it indicated that the other shore of the lake (which I think most people assume is part of Canada) is actually part of Minnesota. The way most maps are drawn implies that the lake is the border and that everything north of the lake is Canada and everything south of the lake is the US. Not entirely true apparently. I always assumed the lake was the border. Learn something new everyday. =)
March 6, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I lived in Switzerland for about 4 years and I remembered a news headliner, “Swiss-Italian border changing by the meters”. Here’s an acticle describing the details http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/melting-snow-prompts-border-change-between-switzerland-and-italy-1653181.html. Basically, the melting glaciers are shifting the border so that after about 140 years they finally have to make some changes again!