Canada and the United States share the longest,
straightest, possibly boringest border in the world. But, look closer, and there's plenty
of bizarreness to be found. While these sister nations get along fairly
well, they both want to make it really clear whose side of the continent is whose. And
they've done this by carving a 20-foot wide space along the border. All five and a half
thousand miles of it. With the exception of the rare New England
town that predates national borders or the odd airport that needed extending, this space
is the no-touching-zone between the countries and they're super serious about keeping it
clear. It matters not if the no-touching-zone runs through hundreds of miles of virtually
uninhabited Alaskan / Yukon wilderness. Those border trees, will not stand. Which might make you think this must be the
longest, straightest deforested place in the world, but it isn't. Deforested: yes, but
straight? Not at all. Sure it looks straight and on a map, and the
treaties establishing the line *say* it's straight... but in the real world the official
border is 900 lines that zig-zags from the horizontal by as much as several hundred feet. How did this happen? Well, imagine you're
back in North America in the 1800s -- The 49th parallel (one of those horizontal lines
you see on a globe) has just been set as the national boundary and it's your job to make
it real. You're handed a compass and a ball of string and told to carefully mark off the
next 2/3rds of a continent. Don't mind that uncharted wilderness in the way: just keep
the line straight. Yeah. Good luck. With that. The men who surveyed the land did the best
they could and built over 900 monuments. They're in about as straight as you could expect a
pre-GPS civilization to make, but it's not the kind of spherical / planar intersection
that would bring a mathematician joy. Nonetheless these monuments define the border
and the no-touching-zone plays connect-the-dots with them. Oh, and while there are about 900 markers
along this section of the border, there are about 8,000 in total that define the shape
of the nations. Despite this massive project Canada and the
United States still have disputed territory. There is a series of islands in the Atlantic
that the United States claims are part of Maine and Canada claims are part of New Brunswick.
Canada, assuming the islands are hers built a lighthouse on one of them, and the United
States, assuming the islands are hers pretends the lighthouse doesn't exist. It's not a huge problem as the argument is
mostly over tourists who want to see puffins and fishermen who want to catch lobsters,
but let's hope the disagreement gets resolved before someone finds oil under that lighthouse. Even the non-disputed territory has a few
notably weird spots: such as this tick of the border upward into Canada. Zoom in and
it gets stranger as the border isn't over solid land but runs through a lake to cut
off a bit of Canada before diving back down to the US. This spot is home to about 100 Americans and
is a perfect example of how border irregularities are born: Back in 1783 when the victorious Americans
were negotiating with the British who controlled what would one day be Canada, they needed
a map, and this map was the best available at the time. While the East Coast looks pretty
good, the wester it goes the sparser it gets. Under negotiation was the edge of what would
one day be Minnesota and Manitoba. But unfortunately, that area was hidden underneath an inset on
the map, so the Americans and British were bordering blind. Seriously. They guessed that the border should start
from the northwestern part of this lake and go in a horizontal line until it crossed the
Mississippi... somewhere. But somewhere, turned out to be nowhere as
the mighty Mississippi stops short of that line, which left the border vague until 35
years later when a second round of negotiations established the aforementioned 49th parallel. But there was still a problem as the lake
mentioned earlier was both higher, and less circular than first though, putting its northwesterly
point here so the existing border had to jump up to meet it and then drop straight down
to the 49th, awkwardly cutting off a bit of Canada, before heading west across the remainder
of the continent. Turns out you just can't draw a straight(-ish)
line for hundreds of miles without causing a few more problems. One of which was luckily spotted in advance:
Vancouver Island, which the 49th would have sliced through, but both sides agreed that
would be dumb so the border swoops around the island. However, next door to Vancouver Island is
Point Roberts which went unnoticed as so today the border blithey cuts across. It's a nice
little town, home to over 1,000 Americans, but has only a primary school so its older
kids have to cross international borders four times a day to go to school in their own state. In a pleasing symetry, the East cost has the
exact opposite situation with a Canadian Island whose only land route is a bridge to the United
States. And these two aren't the only places where
each country contains a bit of the other: there are several more, easily spotted in
sattelite photos by the no-touching zone. Regardless of if the land in question is just
an uninhabited strip, in the middle of a lake, in the middle of nowhere, the border between
these sister nations must remain clearly marked.
An astounding and fact-packed video as always. Can't wait for more 'Bizarre Borders' instalments, unless this is it?
Edit: also, were they any more facts that didn't make it into the final video? I'd love to know what other things you came across during your research.
Geeze, that must have sucked to be the guys that had to cut down all those trees. Kilometers of just pure chopping, fuck that. Great video CGP.
How long did that Google Earth thingy take you to make?
Wow, I was kind of surprised when I saw my hometown in the video! Funny how a small town like that made it on your channel.
Awesome video as always.
You missed the biggest, and probably the least-known border oddity: a little slice of Quebec that can only be reached by land from New York, but that had no border controls on either the U.S. or Canadian side. You're just driving down what appears to be a residential street (one of two that cross the border) and bam, next thing you know, there's a Canadian post office! Or at least that's how it appears on all the aerial views of the area (Google Street View has not penetrated this area yet).
And how did this happen? I don't know, but it turns out that the land on both the north and south sides of the border is part of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation. On the Quebec side it's known as St. Regis so you can search for that if you are looking for the place. I really wish Google would send their street view car up there because I'd love to take a virtual tour, but maybe the Akwesasne Mohawks don't take too kindly to cars with cameras on the roof?
Actually, there are two places like this: The one I mentioned above, and another, larger piece of land just to the east, also part of the St. Regis Reservation, that is separated from the first by the St. Regis River. The larger piece appears to be less densely populated but even so there are about a half dozen roads that cross the border with no border controls visible on aerial shots. It isn't until you are east of the Salmon River, just north of Ft. Covington, NY that you see manned border posts at the road crossings. If you are on the west side of the Salmon River, on Hopkins Point Road/Chemin de la Pointe-Hopkins you don't see any border checkpoint. But on the east side of the river, on Water Street, you do see border control checkpoints on both sides, though the one on the U.S. side appears to be several hundred feet south of the actual border.
Considering that in most places the border has been locked up tight in the last decade, it's kind of nice that there's still a place where you can technically cross between the two nations without having to report to anyone, as far as I can tell. Although I'm sure if you asked the Akwesasne Mohawks about it, they'd have a different take on whose nation it is!
Here are a couple of videos from the area:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTltdh2cpaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-Q9zL_P2Y
Congratulations on having your video linked to on the front page!
/r/MapPorn
Another interesting bit of history about the border is the Pig War. It's the controversy over who owned the islands(the San Juans) between Vancouver Island and the mainland in the Puget Sound.
Who pays for the constant deforestation? Is there a separate government branch that meets every now and then to assign places to be cleaned? Is it an even 50/50 split in the price? Do the border states/provinces chip in?