Idaho Montana Border

[roadman65]

I couldn't help notice how convoluted the border is between these two states. Apparently between Wyoming and US 93, the state line is placed along the Continental Divide. However from US 93 to just about the MSR 200 crossing, there is no river or anything natural for it to follow to give it the ziz zag line it follows.

Also to point out north of MSR 200, that state boundary does straighten out and runs N-S perfectly until Canada.

Does anyone know where that crazy boundary came about?

[Amaury]

Are you able to point to this on Google Maps in street view? I'm curious about this now.

[jgb191]

I saw the reasoning for the current border on my favorite documentary series "How the States Got Their Shapes"

[J N Winkler]

I couldn't help notice how convoluted the border is between these two states. Apparently between Wyoming and US 93, the state line is placed along the Continental Divide. However from US 93 to just about the MSR 200 crossing, there is no river or anything natural for it to follow to give it the ziz zag line it follows.

Wikipedia has an explanation.  The part that deviates from the Continental Divide is still a watershed boundary since it follows the Bitterroot Range, but was designed to give Montana the Flathead and Bitterroot Valleys.

[hbelkins]

I couldn't help notice how convoluted the border is between these two states. Apparently between Wyoming and US 93, the state line is placed along the Continental Divide. However from US 93 to just about the MSR 200 crossing, there is no river or anything natural for it to follow to give it the ziz zag line it follows.

Also to point out north of MSR 200, that state boundary does straighten out and runs N-S perfectly until Canada.

Does anyone know where that crazy boundary came about?

Sad Nixon's facial features were hard to duplicate.

[bandit957]

I think it looks like a profile of Ronald Reagan.

[Max Rockatansky]

The Continental Divide is still a better boundary line than random straight lines that don't factor geography at all.

[J N Winkler]

The Continental Divide is still a better boundary line than random straight lines that don't factor geography at all.

It doesn't help that a large number of states (including Kansas, Colorado, and Montana) have boundary segments defined in terms of the Washington meridian, which is a not-nice number of degrees west of the Greenwich meridian.

[Scott5114]

The Continental Divide is still a better boundary line than random straight lines that don't factor geography at all.

Eh, coming from the land of straight lines, it's hard to say one is better than the other. There's really no logical place to put the boundary between Kansas and Oklahoma that follows a natural feature. The rivers and elevation changes in that area all run more or less perpendicular or diagonal to the boundary. So any natural border would result in vastly different borders to the two states, probably changing the character of each of them.

[Rothman]

The Continental Divide is still a better boundary line than random straight lines that don't factor geography at all.

Eh, coming from the land of straight lines, it's hard to say one is better than the other. There's really no logical place to put the boundary between Kansas and Oklahoma that follows a natural feature. The rivers and elevation changes in that area all run more or less perpendicular or diagonal to the boundary. So any natural border would result in vastly different borders to the two states, probably changing the character of each of them.

Makes you wonder if they should be separate states.  If you have to draw a fake border to differentiate them, are they really that different?

[Scott5114]

The Continental Divide is still a better boundary line than random straight lines that don't factor geography at all.

Eh, coming from the land of straight lines, it's hard to say one is better than the other. There's really no logical place to put the boundary between Kansas and Oklahoma that follows a natural feature. The rivers and elevation changes in that area all run more or less perpendicular or diagonal to the boundary. So any natural border would result in vastly different borders to the two states, probably changing the character of each of them.

Makes you wonder if they should be separate states.  If you have to draw a fake border to differentiate them, are they really that different?

Yes.

[CtrlAltDel]

Makes you wonder if they should be separate states.  If you have to draw a fake border to differentiate them, are they really that different?

That would imply that the border between the Netherlands and Belgium is perhaps suboptimal:

[hotdogPi]

The Continental Divide is still a better boundary line than random straight lines that don't factor geography at all.

Eh, coming from the land of straight lines, it's hard to say one is better than the other. There's really no logical place to put the boundary between Kansas and Oklahoma that follows a natural feature. The rivers and elevation changes in that area all run more or less perpendicular or diagonal to the boundary. So any natural border would result in vastly different borders to the two states, probably changing the character of each of them.

Makes you wonder if they should be separate states.  If you have to draw a fake border to differentiate them, are they really that different?

Yes.

Other than things that couldn't happen if they were one state (e.g. Oklahoma's turnpike-to-nowhere system, the two states currently having governors from opposite parties), what is the difference between the two states? The only thing I can think of is the ability/inability to handle snow.

[kphoger]

Other than things that couldn't happen if they were one state (e.g. Oklahoma's turnpike-to-nowhere system, the two states currently having governors from opposite parties), what is the difference between the two states? The only thing I can think of is the ability/inability to handle snow.

Why is a natural feature any better than a line of latitude?

Is there a problem with the Continental Divide running right through the middle of Colorado, for example?

[Scott5114]

The Continental Divide is still a better boundary line than random straight lines that don't factor geography at all.

Eh, coming from the land of straight lines, it's hard to say one is better than the other. There's really no logical place to put the boundary between Kansas and Oklahoma that follows a natural feature. The rivers and elevation changes in that area all run more or less perpendicular or diagonal to the boundary. So any natural border would result in vastly different borders to the two states, probably changing the character of each of them.

Makes you wonder if they should be separate states.  If you have to draw a fake border to differentiate them, are they really that different?

Yes.

Other than things that couldn't happen if they were one state (e.g. Oklahoma's turnpike-to-nowhere system, the two states currently having governors from opposite parties), what is the difference between the two states? The only thing I can think of is the ability/inability to handle snow.

There are a number of cultural differences that are hard to articulate, but they do exist.

Since you mentioned governors, it's instructive to see the differences in policies between the two states. There are enough tradeoffs that I would not consider one clearly better than the other (for instance, Kansas has much more liberal reproductive rights than Oklahoma, but cannabis is wholly illegal), but there's a clear difference between the two, whereas Oklahoma's laws are much more similar to Texas and the Southern states. The most reasonable explanation for this difference is that Kansas simply has different values as a state than Oklahoma does.

[J N Winkler]

There are a number of cultural differences that are hard to articulate, but they do exist.

Since you mentioned governors, it's instructive to see the differences in policies between the two states. There are enough tradeoffs that I would not consider one clearly better than the other (for instance, Kansas has much more liberal reproductive rights than Oklahoma, but cannabis is wholly illegal), but there's a clear difference between the two, whereas Oklahoma's laws are much more similar to Texas and the Southern states. The most reasonable explanation for this difference is that Kansas simply has different values as a state than Oklahoma does.

One big difference historically is that Oklahoma was used for forced resettlement of Native tribes, while Kansas largely was not.  That has continuing implications in terms of geography, culture, and the legal system, not to mention politics.

Also, while Kansas and Oklahoma have similar percentages identifying as Christian (76% and 79% respectively), evangelicals in Oklahoma almost have an absolute majority (47% versus 31% in Kansas), largely at the expense of mainline Protestants and Catholics (24% and 18% in Kansas versus 18% and 8% in Oklahoma).  In terms of the relative prominence of evangelicals, Kansas is similar to Nebraska while Oklahoma is similar to Alabama.  (This is not to say that Nebraska is a carbon copy of Kansas.  It has a different vibe, owing not just to the dominance of the Union Pacific but also to different settlement patterns in the western part, where the Kinkaid Act allowed farmers to homestead on 640 acres instead of the usual 160.)

[DandyDan]

I think it looks like a profile of Ronald Reagan.

I always thought it was Abraham Lincoln.

[Dirt Roads]

I couldn't help notice how convoluted the border is between these two states. Apparently between Wyoming and US 93, the state line is placed along the Continental Divide. However from US 93 to just about the MSR 200 crossing, there is no river or anything natural for it to follow to give it the ziz zag line it follows.

Wikipedia has an explanation.  The part that deviates from the Continental Divide is still a watershed boundary since it follows the Bitterroot Range, but was designed to give Montana the Flathead and Bitterroot Valleys.

This is one of the craziest geographic oddities in the United States.  The original Idaho Territory included all of what is now Montana and most of what is now Wyoming.  Abraham Lincoln appointed former Ohio congressman Sidney Edgerton to be the Chief Justice of the territory.  After a squabble with Territorial Gov. William H. Wallace over the location of courthouses in the central part of the Territory, Edgerton worked out a deal with gold miners in the Flathead and Bitterroot valleys to send gold back to the Lincoln administration (for all pretenses, a very large bribe).  Edgerton took the gold nuggets back to Washington himself, and talked Lincoln and a number of members of Congress to back a plan to separate a new Montana Territory from the Idaho Territory, including the gold mining region west of the Rocky Mountain divide.  The primary economical engine of Idaho was essentially wrested from the territory and its governor.  But it gave Idaho a really cool panhandle (which appeals to us folks back in West Virginia, many of whom have never seen gold in the wild).