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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Hawaii and its extensions
Find “Our States Have Crazy Shapes” on amazon.com and bluespectrumbooks.com You would think that in a discussion about how the states got their shapes that Hawaii would be a no brainer. – – – ocean surrounds a few chunks … Continue reading
Arkansas is two notches above
Arkansas began life as an almost rectangle that later had two notches carved out of it. When Congress started to divide up the Louisiana Purchase, a couple of historic decisions played a part in the shape of Arkansas that stands … Continue reading
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Tagged Adams-Onis Treaty, Arkansas, Choctaw Indians, Louisiana purchase, Missouri Boot Heel
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West Virginia breaks away
How did West Virginia get that goofy shape? Is it possible that someone intentionally created a state that looks like this? Not exactly. West Virginia was “spun off” from Virginia when residents on both sides of the Appalachian Mountains acknowledged … Continue reading
A river runs through it and around it
One of the more interesting side stories about states’ borders are the cases in which disputes about these borders continue long after the state is admitted into the union. Surveying errors, disagreements about markers, and disputes about which state is … Continue reading
Our states looked like stripes
By the time the colonial settlers were setting boundaries for their territories in the New World they were already aware that far to the west this chunk of land ended at the Pacific Ocean. Both the Spanish and the French … Continue reading
Wyoming takes a bite out of Utah
By the time westward expansion brought settlers across the Mississippi River, states started to take on rather uninteresting shapes. Unimaginative shapes – – – like “rectangle.” As explained in an earlier post, the advent of railroads had removed the need … Continue reading
California – size matters!
The massive size of California, much like Texas and Alaska, completely violates Thomas Jefferson’s intention that all states should be roughly equal in size. How did California avoid being broken up into three or four smaller states? The explanation … Continue reading
Round headed Delaware
Delaware has a feature that no other state has – a perfect arc for its northern border. Most other colonial borders were either formed by meandering rivers, straight lines from point A to point B, or were carved out by … Continue reading
Nevada has a point
Why does Nevada come to a point at the bottom? It didn’t always look that way. When the territory of Nevada was first being formed the boundary lines created a more rectangular shape with a sideways notch cut out to … Continue reading
Lynn Garthwaite, Author 