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Border irregularities of the United States, particularly panhandles and highway incursions into other jurisdictions, are shown here. Often they are a result of borders which do not conform to geological features such as changes in the course of a river that previously marked a border.
There are several exclaves between the United States and Canada, including the entire state of Alaska (though the state can still be accessed by sea from the United States, except the small settlement of Hyder which is only accessible by road from British Columbia). Other exclaves include Akwesasne, the Northwest Angle, Point Roberts, and Seaway Island.
The status of the waters around Nunez Rocks is disputed. Nunez Rocks is a low-tide elevation ("bare at half-tide" [1] ) area (LTE) that is south of a line known as the "A-B" Line, [2] which was defined in a 1903 arbitration decision on the Alaska–Canada boundary. [3] The court specified the initial boundary point (Point "A") at the northern end of Dixon Entrance [4] and Point "B" 72 nautical miles (83 mi; 133 km) to the east. [5] Canada relies on the "A-B" Line as rendering nearly all of Dixon Entrance as Canadian internal waters. The U.S. does not recognize the "A-B" Line as an official boundary, instead regarding it as allocating sovereignty over the land masses within the Dixon Entrance, [2] with Canada's land south of the line. The U.S. regards the waters as subject to international marine law, and in 1977 it defined an equidistant territorial sea throughout Dixon Entrance. [2] This territory, which surrounds Nunez Rocks, extends south of the "A-B" line for the most part. [2] The United States has not ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, although it adheres to most of its principles as customary international law. Under the treaty, LTEs may be used as basepoints for a territorial sea, and the U.S. uses Nunez Rocks as a basepoint. As a non-signatory, however, there is nothing preventing the U.S. from claiming areas beyond the scope of the Law of the Sea Treaty. The fact remains that, for about half of each day, above-water territory that is Canadian is surrounded by sea territory that the U.S. has declared to be American.
Another disputed area is the Grey Zone, including Machias Seal Island, in the Gulf of Maine.
The Aroostook Valley Country Club is a golf course which straddles the Canada–US border, between the U.S. state of Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The club, located near Perth-Andover, New Brunswick and Fort Fairfield, Maine, has its course (except part of the tee area for the ninth hole, and possibly part of a sand trap on the first hole) and clubhouse on the Canadian side of the border and its parking lot and pro shop on the American side. [6]
East Richford Slide Road in the U.S. state of Vermont crosses into the Canadian province of Québec for a distance of approximately 330 feet (100 m) before returning to the United States. [7]
The Piney Pinecreek Border Airport runway straddles the Canada–U.S. border, between the U.S. state of Minnesota and the Canadian province of Manitoba. [8]
In Texas and Mexico, shifts in the course of the lower Rio Grande have created numerous bancos. Under the Boundary Treaty of 1970 and earlier treaties, the United States and Mexico have maintained the actual course of the river as the international boundary, but both must approve proposed changes. From 1989 to 2009, there were 128 locations where the river changed course, causing land that had been on one side of the river to then occupy the opposite bank. Until the boundary is officially changed, there are 60 small exclaves of the state of Texas now lying on the southern side of the river, as well as 68 such exclaves of Mexico on the northern side of the river.
The legal status of the U.S.-Russian border is unclear. The United States Senate ratified a treaty setting the boundary with the Soviet Union in 1991. However, shortly after, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Russian parliament never voted on the treaty.
These border irregularities were caused by changes in the Mississippi River during the 1812 New Madrid earthquake or other river changes:
Other irregularities involving the Mississippi River:
A salient, also known as a panhandle or bootheel, is an elongated protrusion of one jurisdiction into another.
The Mississippi River is the primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for 2,340 miles (3,766 km) to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is 1,151,000 sq mi (2,980,000 km2), of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the thirteenth-largest river by discharge in the world.
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Spanish Cession, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty, was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico. It settled a standing border dispute between the two countries and was considered a triumph of American diplomacy. It came during the successful Spanish American wars of independence against Spain.
The Northwest Angle, known simply as the Angle by locals, and coextensive with Angle Township, is a pene-exclave of northern Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota. Excluding surveying errors, it is the only place in the contiguous United States north of the 49th parallel, which forms the border between the U.S. and Canada from the Northwest Angle westward to the Strait of Georgia. The land area of the Angle is separated from the rest of Minnesota by Lake of the Woods, but shares a land border with Canada. It is one of six non-island locations in the 48 contiguous states that are practical exclaves of the United States. Oak Island, Angle Inlet and Penasse are in the Northwest Angle.
The Canada–United States border is the longest international border in the world. The boundary is 8,891 km (5,525 mi) long. The land border has two sections: Canada's border with the contiguous United States to its south, and with the U.S. state of Alaska to its west. The bi-national International Boundary Commission deals with matters relating to marking and maintaining the boundary, and the International Joint Commission deals with issues concerning boundary waters. The agencies responsible for facilitating legal passage through the international boundary are the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
UTC−05:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of −05:00. In North America, it is observed in the Eastern Time Zone during standard time, and in the Central Time Zone during the other eight months. The western Caribbean uses it year round.
The Mississippi River Alluvial Plain is an alluvial plain created by the Mississippi River on which lie parts of seven U.S. states, from southern Louisiana to southern Illinois.
The Kentucky Bend, variously called the New Madrid Bend, Madrid Bend, Bessie Bend, or Bubbleland, is an exclave of Fulton County, Kentucky that is encircled by the states of Tennessee and Missouri. The exclave is a portion of a peninsula defined by an oxbow loop meander of the Mississippi River, and its inclusion in the state of Kentucky stems from uncertainties of the course of the Mississippi River when the boundary between Tennessee and Kentucky was established.
The Honey War was a bloodless territorial dispute in 1839 between Iowa Territory and Missouri over their border.
The National Register of Historic Places in the United States is a register including buildings, sites, structures, districts, and objects. The Register automatically includes all National Historic Landmarks as well as all historic areas administered by the U.S. National Park Service. Since its introduction in 1966, more than 97,000 separate listings have been added to the register.
The United States of America was formed after thirteen British colonies in North America declared independence from the British Empire on July 4, 1776. In the Lee Resolution, passed by the Second Continental Congress two days prior, the colonies resolved that they were free and independent states. The union was formalized in the Articles of Confederation, which came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states. Their independence was recognized by Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which concluded the American Revolutionary War. This effectively doubled the size of the colonies, now able to stretch west past the Proclamation Line to the Mississippi River. This land was organized into territories and then states, though there remained some conflict with the sea-to-sea grants claimed by some of the original colonies. In time, these grants were ceded to the federal government.
The parallel 36°30′ north is a circle of latitude that is 36 and one-half degrees north of the equator of the Earth. This parallel of latitude is particularly significant in the history of the United States as the line of the Missouri Compromise, which was used to divide the prospective slave and free states west of the Mississippi River, with the exception of Missouri, which is mostly north of this parallel. The line continues to hold cultural, economic and political significance to this day; the Kinder Institute for Urban Research defines the Sun Belt as being south of 36°30′N latitude.
John C. Sullivan was a surveyor who established the Indian Boundary Line and the Sullivan Line which were to form the boundary between Native Americans and white settlers in Indian Territory from Iowa to Texas.