Weird Borders: State Borders of the United States of America

Ever wondered why Michigan has two pieces? How about why Alaska isn't connected to the rest of the United States?

The state borders are a lot weirder than they first appear, and often simple river borders will have crazy zig-zags that seem to arbitrarily cross the river.

When rivers shape, borders don't, leaving states with strange pieces on the wrong side of the river.

Some states like Oklahoma and West Virgina have bizarre panhandles, and Kentucky even has a part cut off my Missouri. Its a strange border situation called an exclave, which is when a part of a the state is only reachable by land through other states or countries.

Virginia also has the eastern shore which is strangley is on the other side of the Chesapeake bay.

Other bizarre borders include New York and New Jersey, where Liberty island and Ellis island are weirdly part of New York but are surrounded by New Jersey waters. Even stranger is that New York only owns a small peice of ellis island. The island was expanded, but the new land was over New Jersey borders, so it stayed new jersey. Leaving New York with a bizzare enclave on an new jersey island.

Another weird border is that Delaware has some land on New Jersey's side of the Delaware river. This strange situation is because inside Delaware's 12 mile circle, the border is the high water mark of the river, so when the river was filled in the new land became Delaware.

Music:

Star Spangled Banner - American National Anthem
When Johnny Comes Marching Home - Civil War Song
America the Beautiful - 'Murica

[VanDeGraph]

I had to leave a lot out of the video as it was already getting long. The video was quickly became a history of all the US state borders. Which may be interesting, but there is enough information there to fill an entire television series. So I decided to concentrate only on the exclaves and could only do some of the panhandles.


There is a lot of info there if you are curious. Thanks to reddit user /u/MrDowntown for linking me that pdf.


My video editor seems to have glitches for videos longer than 5 minutes so the end of the video might be a bit weird. I'm looking in to getting professional video editing software.

[ganginfr]

he sounds like he's perpetually in the middle of a breath

[mountain_seeker]

Delaware has received more attention in this video than it has ever received any time else

[GenXer]

Being a Marylander, I had a hard time keeping a straight face when he said Poto-"macK"!

[vinni]

I’m from Toledo, born and raised and now you know why the rivalry between the University of Michigan and Ohio State is so fierce!

[EthanEskenazi]

3:15 "Also, the entire state of Maryland is pretty weird."


I couldn't think of a better way to summarize it!

[michaele]

I get that you’re covering a lot but take a deep breath and slow down man.

[jon]

This is what happens when you try to create federal borders in the 1700-1800s.

[demondwilson]

as a Marylander your pronunciation of Potomac triggers me, love your videos.

[knguyennguyen]

Many people said he spoke too fast but I can still hear it very clearly, despite my native language not being English :/

[AllahHuSnackbar]

Colorado and Wyoming over there just sipping their beer and laughing at these

[gammaphonic]

This is insane. As a European, I always thought all those straight lines dividing the states made a lot of sense... I was mistaken.

[cameronmiller]

I live in Toledo! This is why the Ohio Michigan rivalry began

[BryonLape]

The narrator has one of the strangest accents.

[Blalack]

That's weird about states having territory on the "wrong" sides of rivers - I had noticed that on my state's (Arkansas) eastern border with Mississippi. I've always loved maps and I used to see that and wonder why in the heck it was like that. Meandering rivers like the Mississippi, oxbow lakes, the geological processes behind them, and such are extremely interesting to me.

[tobagotr]

Summary of the comment section:

*SLOW DOWN*

[smokertonrkingofclownscatc]

"This triagonal land is mine"
"It's all emphatically mine"
My nigga

[PichuPlayzYT]

1:24, I would like to name my city "Corona"

[moth.monster]

as a person from Maryland we love our weird shaped state

[sbond]

As a Virginian living in Maryland your pronunciation of Potomac made my eyeballs cross. Nonetheless I loved your video and state borders always intrigue me!! Great job