#8: Marble Hill

New York City, it goes without saying, is one of America's most interesting cities.  But this is even more true from a geographical standpoint, given that the city is composed of five boroughs - and five distinct counties - located on four different primary landforms (not including the many smaller islands that belong to one borough or another).  These are, of course, Manhattan Island, Staten Island, Long Island (home to both Brooklyn and Queens), and the New York mainland, home of the Bronx.

But there is a bit of Manhattan that does not conform to the commonly understood border distinctions.

Marble Hill neighborhood on Google Maps (click to enlarge).

Just north of the Harlem River, across from Manhattan Island, is the neighborhood of Marble Hill.  On a map, it appears simply to be part of the Bronx - but it isn't.  It's part of Manhattan.  Why is a neighborhood that's not on Manhattan Island part of Manhattan?  The answer is simple yet strange: it used to be.

The Harlem River is not, strictly speaking, a river, but a strait that separates Manhattan Island from the mainland.  It connects the Hudson River with the East River (itself not really a river) by way of Spuyten Duyvil Creek.  The problem that arose in the 1800s was that Spuyten Duyvil Creek was not terribly conducive to large maritime traffic, forcing ships to go all the way around Manhattan Island if they wanted to reach the East River.

The solution to this was the Harlem River Ship Canal, a straight, deep channel dug out to connect the Harlem and Hudson Rivers in a way that bypassed the original course of Spuyten Duyvil Creek.  Spuyten Duyvil Creek's course ran along the northern border of the Marble Hill neighborhood, then the northernmost point of Manhattan Island.  Once the canal had been dug (it was finished in 1895), Marble Hill was turned into an island.

1895 map showing the plan for the canal.  The island to the north of the canal is Marble Hill.  Source: http://myinwood.net/the-harlem-ship-canal/

In 1914, the original course of Spuyten Duyvil Creek was filled in.  Marble Hill thus became an island no longer; now it was physically attached to the Bronx.  That borough has attempted to lay claim to the neighborhood on at least one occasion - on March 11, 1939, Bronx borough president James Lyons made a pitch to the residents to join the Bronx, but was booed into submission.  Marble Hill gets its city services via the Bronx, presumably for the sake of convenience, and its zip code aligns more closely with those of the Bronx than with those of Manhattan proper.  But legally the neighborhood still belongs to Manhattan, and its residents are happy to keep it that way.  In fact, in 1984 the state legislature formally declared Marble Hill to be part of Manhattan.

Marble Hill today possesses both a stop on the 1 train (225th Street) and a Metro-North stop (Marble Hill) on the Hudson line that help keep it directly connected to Manhattan.  But it remains another one of those curious outposts whose residents value civic pride over geographical convenience.

Marble Hill.  Picture from the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Hill,_Manhattan).

Sources:
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/marble-hill-caught-boroughs-article-1.1781901
http://myinwood.net/the-harlem-ship-canal/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/nyregion/attached-to-the-bronx-but-legally-in-manhattan.html?_r=0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spuyten_Duyvil_Creek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_River_Ship_Canal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Hill,_Manhattan

#6: Campobello Island

At the far eastern point of the United States mainland is a point called West Quoddy Head, Maine.  This is an oddity in itself - the easternmost point in continental America is named "West?" - although it turns out to have a prosaic explanation: to the east of the point is a strait known as Quoddy Narrows, and thus the point lies at the west head of Quoddy Narrows.

But we're not here to talk to about West Quoddy Head.  Instead, let's discuss the piece of land that lies on the other side of Quoddy Narrows: Campobello Island, Canada.

The border between Maine and New Brunswick has long been a matter of some dispute.  There was a brief "war" over it in the 1830s which led to the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which clarified (in the same sort of excruciating geographic legalese as previous border treaties) the boundary.  This seems to have applied primarily to the northern border, however.  The border in southeast Maine, based on the mouth and initial course of the St. Croix River, does not appear to have changed or been claimed differently from how we know it today at any point prior to 1842, as seen on the map here.

Which brings us to Campobello Island.  The odd thing about Campobello isn't that it belongs to Canada; that's been well-established since Jay's Treaty of 1794.  The odd thing is that it's a part of Canada that is only reachable by road from somewhere other than Canada.  That's right: while there are vehicle ferries from Canada, the only road bridge to Campobello starts in the small town of Lubec, Maine.

Bridge crossing from Lubec to Campobello.  Image from http://makemytripadvisor.blogspot.com/2011/05/canada-travel-sensation.html.

In the late 1800s, New England had become a place where the well-to-do from New York and other major cities came to spend time during the summers due to the milder ocean climate and open space to build large seaside estates.  Campobello, though officially in Canada, became a commonly-visited part of that trade.  In the mid-1880s, James Roosevelt, scion of a prominent American family, purchased several acres of land on the island and built a summer home there.

By the 1910s and 1920s, the resort craze had died out, and the island's main industry returned to fishing.  So why, in 1962, was a bridge built from Lubec to Campobello?  Well, you probably already know: James Roosevelt was the father of the 32nd U.S. president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and FDR summered on the island regularly from 1909 until 1921.  The bridge, indeed, is named the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Bridge.

FDR isn't the only reason the bridge was built; Lubec, Maine and Campobello have expectedly close ties, and joining the two was the most reasonable location for a road crossing to Campobello, as the nearest Canadian mainland is roughly ten miles away, while Lubec is only a few hundred yards across a narrow channel.  But the 1964 opening of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park confirmed the utility of the crossing.

The park may be the oddest thing about Campobello itself, as it sits within Canada but is administered by a commission of citizens from both countries.  This makes it the only part of the National Park Service I'm aware of that one requires a passport to visit.

Google Maps image of the crossing between Lubec, ME and Campobello, showing the location of the international park.

#3: The Northwest Angle

Minnesota's northern border with Canada begins where the Pigeon River empties into Lake Superior, at almost exactly 48ºN latitude. It meanders through a series of lakes and rivers until reaching the Rainy River at International Falls; from there it traces the Rainy back up to Lake of the Woods. On the far western side of Lake of the Woods, Minnesota's land finally hits the 49th parallel, and the border levels off and runs due west from there, to the North Dakota border (and on to the Pacific). That all sounds like you'd expect it to - except that's not the whole story.

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 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.)

...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

#1: Point Roberts, Washington

In 1846, the United States and Britain finally settled their long-standing dispute over the Oregon Country with the signing of the Oregon Treaty. The treaty's first article was its most important:

From the point of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, where the boundary laid down in existing treaties and conventions between the United States and Great Britain terminates, the line of boundary between the territories of the United States and those of her Britannic Majesty shall be continued westward along the said forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca's Straits, to the Pacific Ocean: Provided, however, That the navigation of the whole of the said channel and straits, south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, remain free and open to both parties.

An earlier treaty had already extended the division between the US and Canada as far west as the Rockies along the 49th parallel; the Oregon Treaty simply finished the job, extending it all the way to the ocean. Crucially for Britain, Vancouver Island (which dips well over a half degree of latitude south of 49ºN) was exempted from the line, maintaining their control over the full island (and particularly the port of Victoria).

Most likely the treaty was drawn up by bureaucrats thousands of miles away, because it didn't take into account a tiny spit of land located east of the ocean boundary but south of 49ºN latitude: Point Roberts.

Google Maps satellite image showing Point Roberts.

The closest the U.S. mainland gets to Point Roberts is several miles away across Boundary Bay. Driving to the U.S. takes 40 minutes and requires two border crossings, according to the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce web site, and that's just to get to the nearest pharmacy. Need a hospital? Insurance isn't going to pay for a Canadian visit, so you're stuck driving to Bellingham, 70 minutes away.

Only about 1,300 people live in Point Roberts, but according to an article in Canadian paper The Province, "in summer the population swells to about 4,500 and the majority of residents are vacationing Canadians." Point Roberts seems in many ways to be at least as Canadian as it is American - many of even the full-time residents are retired Canadians, it's only within the past two decades that the Point got a U.S. area code (using Vancouver's before that), and some Canadian businesses find it expedient to maintain American mailing addresses at Point Roberts' post office.

Google Maps satellite image of the border crossing, with Point Roberts below and Canada above.

Like many geopolitically isolated areas, Point Roberts once talked of joining the region to which it was more closely attached, but it never happened, and today it's still a secluded piece of America that just happens to be better attended by Canadian vacationers.

A political map showing Point Roberts in relation to Vancouver Island.