Oddities of U.S. Geography Part 3

howdy it's kyle with another installment of oddities of us geography this is the third video in this series and i'll leave links to the other two in the description if you want to check those out but this being the third video in this series not all these are truly oddities that's why i've added the word quirks in the title but either way let's take a look at some interesting quirks and features of us geography the first one that i'm going to mention is about alaska's location relative to the rest of the us as most americans know alaska is a northernmost state in the u.s with the northern third of the state being north of the arctic circle but alaska is also the westernmost state in the u.s the aleutian island chain which extends southwest from mainland alaska extends farther west than the westernmost islands of hawaii and the aleutian island chain is so long it extends even farther west than that to the point where it crosses the international date line atu island is the westernmost portion of alaska but it's so far west that it's actually east and even though atu island is west of the international dateline it operates as if it were east of the dateline that way it's never too confusing at two is always on the same day as the rest of alaska but technically speaking that makes alaska the northernmost westernmost and easternmost state in the u.s from the cold of alaska to the tropics of hawaii let's take a look at some of their highways if you look on a road map of hawaii you will notice that there are interstate highways there at first that might seem very strange being the interstate means it would have to connect multiple states and of course you cannot drive from hawaii to another state however hawaii receives the same type of federal funding for robes as all the other states so for interstate highways it has to have a special condition and they're simply numbered one two three but they all have the letter h in front of it and there's some good info out there about the engineering and construction of h3 and that goes through a beautiful stretch of rain forest through some tunnels and it might very well be the most beautiful interstate drive in the country but yeah hawaii has interstate highways staying in hawaii let's talk about its smallest county kalaweo county the area was originally set aside as a quarantine for people with leprosy and this goes back before the days of hawaii was a state but when hawaii became a state this area became its own county there's always been a very small population there at the 2020 census there was a total of 82 people at the 2010 census it was the least populous county in the country however it's only the second least populous now and that's because the least populous county in the country is loving county texas this is in the southwestern portion of the state right along the new mexico border at the 2020 census there was a population of 64 people down from 82 in 2010 like most of the rest of rural texas the county is losing population however going from 82 to 64 in 10 years there really isn't that much more room for it to go there are countless number of ghost towns in the us but i've never heard of a county losing all of its population i've driven through the county and the largest town i guess you could say is called mentone it's really small basically it's a collection of houses and a few trailers and yet it's its own county next i want to talk about where canada borders france there's a small portion of france that borders canada just to the southwest of the province of newfoundland and these are a couple of small islands that are french territories called saint pierre and mekalon and these two little islands are the last piece of the old new france colony of north america so you think about quebec and canada and louisiana and all this territory in north america that france had well all they have left is these two little islands so if you're an american looking to get to france in the shortest distance possible this is it next i want to talk about sand mountain alabama this is the most densely populated rural part of the country that might sound like an oxymoron but there are approximately 100 000 people that live on sand mountain and it's entirely rural it isn't really a mountain it's actually a ridge but it does look kind of like a mountain as you look at this map the area just east of the tennessee river and west of interstate 59 is approximately what you call sand mountain and on top of the mountain or the ridge is basically one long chain of towns connected almost like a bunch of train cars so there'll be a really small town of maybe a thousand or so people maybe a mile of open space and another small town of 2000 people there may be a couple of miles of space to maybe a town of 500 people maybe a couple of miles of space maybe a town of 3 000 people that goes on like this for quite a while the biggest town in this region is called rainsville and there's only about 5 000 people in the entire town and the drive through this area is very interesting it's about 50 miles or so and again it's all just really small towns but they all add up to about a hundred thousand people this makes it the most densely populated part of rural america so let's stay in the same part of the country for this next quirk so the area around sand mountain is about a half an hour or so southwest of chattanooga where i live there are many city and county and state borders in the u.s they're not quite right because they were done with old type of technology and the survey wasn't quite correct however the vast majority of these involve very small areas and very few people live in the areas that would be disputed however arguably the most consequential of all these surveying errors is the one right around chattanooga essentially the error is that georgia is supposed to extend about a mile farther north than it currently does this would have huge consequences for two reasons one it would put portions of the tennessee river in georgia and thus allow georgia to have access to water in the river there was a huge drought around 2007-2008 and georgia was running low on water so they dusted off some old books and ledgers and realized that george is supposed to extend north and supposed to have access to the tennessee river and the state of georgia almost sued the state of tennessee to gain access to the river but it wouldn't just be consequential in terms of water if all the previous surveying errors were fixed based on using current technology this one being faked would cause the most number of people to have to move states perhaps as many as a hundred thousand people would be moved from tennessee to georgia if this line were fixed between a big change in water availability and a big shift in population fixing this survey would be a huge deal another interesting state border involves an exclave of delaware if you look at this map there's a small part that looks like it might be part of new jersey but it's actually part of delaware this area is known as fins point and it's most known for having a national cemetery there however in the 20th century the army corps of engineers was dredging out a part of the channel to make it easier for ships to navigate the delaware river as a result some of this dredged land resurfaced on the east banks of the delaware river however based on the charter and how the original state boundaries were drawn this would have to be part of delaware and so that's why you had this little exclave of delaware across the delaware river attached to new jersey next i want to talk about interstate 19 in arizona this is a regular interstate that connects the city of tucson to the mexican border and the cross-border town of nogales but why i-19 is so interesting is that the mile markers are actually kilometer markers it's the only interstate in the u.s that exclusively uses the metric system there are quite a few interstates in the country that have both miles and kilometers marks on them but i-19 is metric only the interstate was built at a time when the u.s was considering shifting to the metric system just think if people wouldn't have been so reluctant back then to switch that by now have been completely normal for us to be using metric which is the way it should be but as it is interstate 19 is the closest thing we got next i want to talk about the dc suburbs of arlington and alexandria virginia you look at this map here and you can see arlington and alexandria just across the potomac river from washington virginia has a really strange way of doing cities and counties and it really comes to light we look at these two places so in virginia places like virginia beach or norfolk or newport news or richmond are cities but they're not part of a county so based on the way that virginia does things it makes sense that alexandria is a city but not part of a county however arlington is a county but not a city so even though from a geography standpoint arlington is a city from a jurisdictional standpoint it's not it's a county so that's just one more way that virginia messes with the census and makes it a little more difficult to manage population stats next i want to talk about the location of chinatown and little italy in manhattan the southern end of manhattan is downtown and just north of the financial district is where you have chinatown and little italy these two neighborhoods are directly adjacent to each other and one basically fades into the other on the opposite end of the country san francisco is another city that has a large chinese and italian immigrant history and just like in manhattan once you go north of the financial district in san francisco you get to chinatown and directly adjacent to chinatown is little italy it's probably just a coincidence but it is very interesting that little italy and chinatown are directly adjacent to each other in both new york and san francisco so if you're walking around this part of town in either one of these cities you have a lot of great options for food if you know of any other cities where little italy is directly adjacent to chinatown basically by crossing a street going from one to the other let me know all right from a segway of talking about san francisco and new york we'll talk about the moon if you're curious how big the moon is the diameter is about 2 159 miles or 3476 kilometers which makes the diameter of the moon approximately the same as the width of the contiguous us so in other words if you drive from san francisco to new york and then back it's the same as driving around the entire moon so now a little quirky about the names of the great lakes there are five great lakes and the state of michigan and the province of ontario are the ones that border the most but an interesting quirk is that lake michigan is the only one that doesn't border ontario and lake ontario is the only one that doesn't border michigan and the last of the quirk i want to mention is in reference to rural america you'll often hear about small town rural america and now it's different than big city urban america and there are many features of small town rural america that you'll find all throughout the country regardless of geography however i'd like to point out that key west florida is in fact small town rural america so the next time somebody wants to pigeonhole small towns remind them of key west otherwise known as the conch republic so there it is the third installment of oddities of us geography and again i'll leave the links to the other videos in the description box you can check those out but i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give me a thumbs up to let me know you approve and subscribe to this channel if you're interested in learning more about us geography i'm talking about cities and counties and states and comparing them and ranking them in all kinds of different categories talking about cross-country road tripping and everything i talk about comes from a little more nerdy type perspective but yeah thanks for watching geography king signing out

Channel: Geography King

Views: 275,708

Keywords: geography, geography king, oddities

Id: L0_z3YTCCBU

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 22 2021