The Northwest Angle of Minnesota, the only part of the lower 48 states north of 49ºN latitude.
As you can see from the Google satellite map above, the border doesn't trace the Minnesota coast. Nor does it go to 49ºN within the lake and then cut across. Instead, it continues north and slightly west, wrapping around the piece of land known as the Northwest Angle before slicing back down on the same straight line that divides Manitoba and Ontario; when it reaches 49ºN latitude again, only then does it head due west.
The Angle is enough of an anomaly that many maps of Minnesota made in the years before its 1858 statehood didn't show it. Even after 1858, the maps weren't always current. This is embarrassing from a cartographic standpoint because the Angle had been officially U.S. territory since 1818, when an Anglo-American treaty cleared up a lingering problem created by errors in geography assumed by the 1783 Treaty of Paris - the one that ended the Revolutionary War.
This 1864 map by Johnson and Ward shows Minnesota's border never rising above the 49th parallel, even though Minnesota had been a state for six years by this point and had its northern boundary set for 46 years.
The Angle is enough of an anomaly that many maps of Minnesota made in the years before its 1858 statehood didn't show it. Even after 1858, the maps weren't always current. This is embarrassing from a cartographic standpoint because the Angle had been officially U.S. territory since 1818, when an Anglo-American treaty cleared up a lingering problem created by errors in geography assumed by the 1783 Treaty of Paris - the one that ended the Revolutionary War.
This 1864 map by Johnson and Ward shows Minnesota's border never rising above the 49th parallel, even though Minnesota had been a state for six years by this point and had its northern boundary set for 46 years.
The Treaty of Paris, in setting peace between Britain and the newly-formed United States of America, had to set boundaries. The problem was that in 1783, no one was entirely sure where those boundaries were going to end up. The west coast of North America had been lightly explored; most of the interior was largely unknown. So when it came around to writing Article 2 of the treaty, defining the border between American and British territory, the diplomats for the two sides basically just guessed. (More accurately, they used the Mitchell Map, a mid-18th century document which itself either guessed or was just severely mistaken about the geography of the northwest.)
It goes on like that, in both directions. The problem should be obvious to any student of geography; the treaty provided for a line from the northwest point of Lake of the Woods west to the Mississippi, but the Mississippi doesn't go anywhere near that far north, terminating at Lake Itasca well over a degree of latitude south of Lake of the Woods. (It doesn't go that far west either; Lake Itasca is slightly east of Lake of the Woods' northwesternmost point.)
For a while this wasn't a huge deal; aside from fur trappers, who was spending much time in that part of America anyway? But with American and British relations on a knife edge after the War of 1812, firmer boundaries were needed. The Anglo-American Convention of 1818 provided them by writing over the error; the U.S. was still given the "northwesternmost point" of Lake of the Woods part of the 1783 treaty, but the 1818 convention sent the line due south to the 49th parallel as soon as the water ran out. Even in 1818, though, full surveys weren't available, and it doesn't seem anyone realized that a tiny piece of land would belong to the United States despite being on the other side of the lake.
This 1867 map by G.W. Colton was one of the first to include the Angle within U.S. borders.
...thence through Lake Superior northward of the Isles Royal and Phelipeaux to the Long Lake; thence through the middle of said Long Lake and the water communication between it and the Lake of the Woods, to the said Lake of the Woods; thence through the said lake to the most northwesternmost point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the river Mississippi; thence by a line to be drawn along the middle of the said river Mississippi until it shall intersect the northernmost part of the thirty-first degree of north latitude...
It goes on like that, in both directions. The problem should be obvious to any student of geography; the treaty provided for a line from the northwest point of Lake of the Woods west to the Mississippi, but the Mississippi doesn't go anywhere near that far north, terminating at Lake Itasca well over a degree of latitude south of Lake of the Woods. (It doesn't go that far west either; Lake Itasca is slightly east of Lake of the Woods' northwesternmost point.)
For a while this wasn't a huge deal; aside from fur trappers, who was spending much time in that part of America anyway? But with American and British relations on a knife edge after the War of 1812, firmer boundaries were needed. The Anglo-American Convention of 1818 provided them by writing over the error; the U.S. was still given the "northwesternmost point" of Lake of the Woods part of the 1783 treaty, but the 1818 convention sent the line due south to the 49th parallel as soon as the water ran out. Even in 1818, though, full surveys weren't available, and it doesn't seem anyone realized that a tiny piece of land would belong to the United States despite being on the other side of the lake.
This 1867 map by G.W. Colton was one of the first to include the Angle within U.S. borders.
The problem is the way Lake of the Woods is shaped; while the northwest corner appears at first glance to be within Buffalo Bay (visible in the satellite map above as the protrusion of water within Canadian territory just southwest of the Angle), a little piece of water that wraps around the Angle defines the actual northwest corner, rendering the Angle part of Minnesota by the 1818 treaty. (Oddly, the U.S. and Canada signed a 1925 treaty that was intended to more fully define the borders between the nations, but it makes no mention of the land in the Northwest Angle. Presumably Canada just wasn't interested in fighting over it.)
Some Angle residents talked secession in the late 90s when a dispute over differences in American and Canadian laws regarding fishing on the lake came to a head. A Minnesota congressman even introduced a resolution that would have allowed the Angle to become part of Manitoba should its residents vote for it, but the Red Lake Indians, whose reservation includes most of the Angle's land, were against it (and offended that they hadn't been consulted before the resolution was put forward). As of today, the Angle is still American, in spite of the fact that the fishing laws don't seem to have changed.
Like most remote exclaves, the Angle is sparsely populated; figures vary a bit, but the general consensus is that only about 150 people live in the Angle full-time. As the northernmost piece of the 48 states, it's hard to get to, an isolated piece of an already fairly isolated area (the entire Lake of the Woods county, most of which is south of the lake, has a population of just around 4,000). But its unique geographic circumstances make it a compelling outlier for anyone interested in the whys and wherefores of maps and borders.
Non-linked references:
Historical maps of Minnesota from http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/us_states/minnesota/index.html
Some Angle residents talked secession in the late 90s when a dispute over differences in American and Canadian laws regarding fishing on the lake came to a head. A Minnesota congressman even introduced a resolution that would have allowed the Angle to become part of Manitoba should its residents vote for it, but the Red Lake Indians, whose reservation includes most of the Angle's land, were against it (and offended that they hadn't been consulted before the resolution was put forward). As of today, the Angle is still American, in spite of the fact that the fishing laws don't seem to have changed.
Like most remote exclaves, the Angle is sparsely populated; figures vary a bit, but the general consensus is that only about 150 people live in the Angle full-time. As the northernmost piece of the 48 states, it's hard to get to, an isolated piece of an already fairly isolated area (the entire Lake of the Woods county, most of which is south of the lake, has a population of just around 4,000). But its unique geographic circumstances make it a compelling outlier for anyone interested in the whys and wherefores of maps and borders.
Non-linked references:
Historical maps of Minnesota from http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/us_states/minnesota/index.html
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