How can the states in the US have straight line borders?

Question

I'm very curious, because I was looking at the map of the US and I realized the following thing: the state's have straight line borders. How is that possible? Where do they get these straight lines from? Obviously there isn't any line drawn into the ground, so how could that be true?

Answer 1

I was curious about the same things you are, and also about what seemed "strange" features -- like why do Oklahoma, Maryland, and others have panhandles; why does southern Connecticut jut into New York; and why does the southern boundary of Michigan jog at the juncture with Ohio and Indiana?

On amazon.com I found a neat little book that answers all these questions -- "State and National Boundaries of the United States" by Gary Alden Smith (2004). Whatever I paid for it, it was well worth the price, because I look at it often.

Most of the state and national boundaries are either straight lines, or they follow rivers, watersheds, the ridges of mountain ranges, or the projection of an ocean shoreline. The straight lines, which you ask about, are frequently north-south meridians or east-west parallels, but occasionally slanted, as the lower portion of the boundary between California and Nevada.

State boundaries were fixed by the U.S. Congress when the state was admitted to the Union. International boundaries with Canada and Mexico were established by treaty. Historically, some of the state boundaries have their roots in international treaties. The western boundary of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the northern boundary of the 1819 acquisition of Florida are examples of this.

California is a good example for answering your question. It has four straight lines and two squiggly lines. The Pacific Ocean bounds it on the west. An 1819 treaty with Spain (which at the time owned California, which was then part of Mexico) established the "Adams-Onis Line" at the 42nd parallel. Today, this is the northern boundary between California and Oregon.

When California was ready for statehood in 1849, some wanted an eastern boundary along the line of the Sierra Nevada; others wanted California to extend as far as the Rocky Mountains. As a compromise, they settled on a vertical line along the 120th meridian from the Oregon border (42nd parallel) down to the 39th parallel -- a point in the middle of Lake Tahoe.

From that point they ran a slanted line to where the 35th parallel meets the Colorado River, and then the boundary with Arizona follows that squiggly river down to the Mexican border.

If you look at a map of California, that slanted line makes some sense. From Cape Mendocino in the north down to the Mexican border, the California coastline tends toward the southeast. The slanted border with Nevada roughly parallels that coastline so that the east-west width of the state is approximately the same everywhere from north to south.

The border with Mexico results from the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican-American War. The border runs from the confluence of the Colorado and Gila Rivers (Yuma, Arizona) to a point on the ocean just south of San Diego Bay.

California is just one fairly comprehensive example of how states get straight and squiggly borders. Lots of states have similar stories, but you get the idea.

Answer 2

Us State Borders

Answer 3

when you look at a map of the U.S., you'd see that most of the "square, straight-line bordered" states are in the west, and most of the states in the east... are.. well, various shapes and sizes. this is because when the united states (new england) was first discovered, they used goegraphical landmarks to mark their borders (to make it easier), and since all the 13 colonies were in the east, all of the east states do not really have a "square" shape.... while the borders of states in the west are not exactly "straight", they ARE straighter than the borders of the east, and that's because the borders do not really follow a grographical landmark; they were designated by the people in the east colonies who were ready to move west... what the history textbooks say are that a lot of important leaders got together and HAND-DREW (because they didnt have computers back then) the borders... and they didn't wanna make it all wiggly and make it look messy, right? so they made straight borders..... and those are the black lines that you see on the map of U.S. today...
hope this helped!

Answer 4

Well, why not? They are there to deliniate between governing bodies which, in this instance, are the States of America. That they are straight or curved makes no difference, they are lines drawn on a map. They exist, they just aren't a natural feature of the landscape, and a surveyor and cartogarpher could take you to the spot where one State passes into another. I'm still not sure why you're confused by this?

Answer 5

where do they get those straight lines from? If the lines are running east west, they are lattitudes,, like the Equator or the two Tropics; if north south they are longitudes; very useful when you are dealing with wide open areas with no clear geographical feature like a mountain range or river to set the border....

its easy to set a border if there is a river.here is the Hudson; that's New Jersey, that's New Yoprk........harder to do in the middle of nowhere, but easy to find a lattitude or longitude by celestial navigation ( even on land!) so you can say this useless piece of desert is New Mexico, that is Arizona...

Answer 6

None of the north-south lines are straight, because they converge at the poles, so they only appear to be straight lines.

The east-west lines are straight and follow a circle around the globe. Examples are the all or parts of the northern boundaries of Utah, Nevada, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland.

Answer 7

Every state has part of a straight line border except Hawaii because it is islands.

Answer 8

Have a look at some North African countries. There, the borders were drawn by ruler on a map when Britain and France carved them up.

Answer 9

They come from that time as no people lived there. At that time the invading people made this borders really by lines on the map!

Answer 10

The "square" state are in the western parts of the USA. These states are places where settlers set up their homesteads. Most homesteads were rectangular. So, the states were laid out in rectangles. The eastern state borders are irregular because they are usually formed by a river or some other natural barrier.