How the States Got Their Shapes

Not much i like more than maps. But maps with answers? Oh-la-la.

How the States Got Their Shapes
Mark Stein

My latest public library check-out answers two of the most pressing questions of my existence:

1. Why is the upper peninsula part of Michigan, not Wisconsin?

(This one i actually learned years ago, thanks to a little snippit in the Journal-Sentinel. According to the paperwork that founded the Northwest territories, the boundary between Michigan and Ohio was supposed to be a straight line east and west from the bottom of Lake Michigan. But Ohio wanted Toledo, a good port, just north of that line. So two territorial armies stared each other down until Washington stepped in with a compromise: Ohio, you take Toledo; Michigan, we'll give you the copper mines of the Upper Peninsula, seeing as no one yet lives in Wisconsin to complain.)

2. Why does Minnesota have that little bloop above it's border north of the Boundary Waters?

A treaty between the US and Canada defined the boundary as the midpoint of a long string of lakes extending as far as Lake of the Woods. From the far northwest corner of that system of lakes, the border ran to the headwaters of the Mississippi. But this was back in the day before GoogleEarth, so no one really knew where the headwaters was in relationship to the Lake of the Woods. So they settled on a north/south line straight to the 49th parallel, the normal border all the way out to Washington State. Just happened the original point of origin was north of that line. So it goes.

Plus you get good maps, like "connecticut according to connecticut."