Roads that come to the same international border twice

[Alps]

That was it, then. I recall being in Skagway. I was quite young when on the train, so it's likely it must have just looped around shortly past the international border.

Yes. It cleared customs at BC, up to Yukon, turned around and back.

[jp the roadgeek]

Rue de la Frontiere in Estcourt, PQ does this.  It actally comes to a cul de sac where part of it sticks into the US.  I was reading they have a gas station there, and you have to go through customs to get to it.  There's no other way into that village from the US except by air or hiking.  Estcourt Station is the only town in Maine that shares utilities and an area code with Quebec.

[agentsteel53]

Rue de la Frontiere in Estcourt, PQ does this.  It actally comes to a cul de sac where part of it sticks into the US.  I was reading they have a gas station there, and you have to go through customs to get to it.  There's no other way into that village from the US except by air or hiking.  Estcourt Station is the only town in Maine that shares utilities and an area code with Quebec.

in fact, US customs held a Canadian who got gas there for 35 days (!) because he did not do the border patrol dance to their satisfaction.

[1995hoo]

Rue de la Frontiere in Estcourt, PQ does this.  It actally comes to a cul de sac where part of it sticks into the US.  I was reading they have a gas station there, and you have to go through customs to get to it.  There's no other way into that village from the US except by air or hiking.  Estcourt Station is the only town in Maine that shares utilities and an area code with Quebec.

in fact, US customs held a Canadian who got gas there for 35 days (!) because he did not do the border patrol dance to their satisfaction.

Michael Jalbert: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2003/02/28/jalbert_030228.html

[agentsteel53]

Michael Jalbert: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2003/02/28/jalbert_030228.html

interesting that they would bother to have a border checkpoint there.  Hyder, Alaska does not have one - the Canadian side does, but not the US. 

there is a private logging road that accesses the rest of the US, but in order to access that, one goes to a completely different part of Estcourt, Maine.  It would make a lot more sense to put the border patrol station at the intersection with that road.

[ghYHZ]

Here's a map link to Estcourt:

http://goo.gl/maps/XpgDf

The bottom of the embankment for CN's transcontinental mainline through here is the border. 

[1995hoo]

Michael Jalbert: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2003/02/28/jalbert_030228.html

interesting that they would bother to have a border checkpoint there.  Hyder, Alaska does not have one - the Canadian side does, but not the US. 

there is a private logging road that accesses the rest of the US, but in order to access that, one goes to a completely different part of Estcourt, Maine.  It would make a lot more sense to put the border patrol station at the intersection with that road.

Apparently part of what's screwy about it is that apparently the checkpoint is down the road in the other direction–you can go to the gas station and return to Canada without passing the checkpoint, although it's illegal to do that. There are some other places where roads cross the border and the checkpoint is either elsewhere or not present at all–the pictures I've seen show that when you enter the Northwest Angle, for example, you report via videophone.

Picture of the notorious Estcourt Station gas station from Wikipedia:

[agentsteel53]

what angle is that photo taken from?  the small white sign at left says that one has to go 1/4km down the road to the right - isn't the registration point directly behind the camera?

[1995hoo]

what angle is that photo taken from?  the small white sign at left says that one has to go 1/4km down the road to the right - isn't the registration point directly behind the camera?

Apparently not. (I've never been there.) 250 m is not exactly a long way, though. It seems the border control is not staffed 24/7, which surely doesn't help matters.

The gas station appears to be the white building located on the teardrop-shaped driveway in this Bing Maps "bird's eye" view: http://binged.it/125uB0c

[vdeane]

Michael Jalbert: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2003/02/28/jalbert_030228.html

interesting that they would bother to have a border checkpoint there.  Hyder, Alaska does not have one - the Canadian side does, but not the US. 

there is a private logging road that accesses the rest of the US, but in order to access that, one goes to a completely different part of Estcourt, Maine.  It would make a lot more sense to put the border patrol station at the intersection with that road.

Apparently part of what's screwy about it is that apparently the checkpoint is down the road in the other direction–you can go to the gas station and return to Canada without passing the checkpoint, although it's illegal to do that. There are some other places where roads cross the border and the checkpoint is either elsewhere or not present at all–the pictures I've seen show that when you enter the Northwest Angle, for example, you report via videophone.

Picture of the notorious Estcourt Station gas station from Wikipedia:

According to the article earlier, it was 100% sanctioned to get gas without going through customs until 9/11 when customs abruptly changed their policy for no reason without bothering to tell any one.  I don't understand why the border station is there in the first place - it must making living in the town next to impossible.

How do places located in the no man's land between customs booths work anyways?  There are many more examples than this, including many places in Yukon on the Alaska Highway, the northern end of US 11, and currently, Cornwall Island.  I can't imagine "but I never left the country" makes life any easier at customs.

[Dr Frankenstein]

From the CBC article:

The U.S. wanted to send a signal that the days of crossing the border without checking in are over, he said. "And I've been hearing reports that this is actually having the desired effect at all border crossings."

Desired effects? Putting people that obviously had no wrongdoing plans in jail "just cause"? What the hell, Homeland Security? Just fine him and leave him alone. Or better, use common damn sense.

[1995hoo]

From the CBC article:

The U.S. wanted to send a signal that the days of crossing the border without checking in are over, he said. "And I've been hearing reports that this is actually having the desired effect at all border crossings."

Desired effects? Putting people that obviously had no wrongdoing plans in jail "just cause"? What the hell, Homeland Security? Just fine him and leave him alone. Or better, use common damn sense.

It's a real problem for the people there who live in Maine but have to cross the border into Canada to go anywhere. If the border control station closes at 2:00 PM, it seems extremely unreasonable to demand they not go to or from their houses for the rest of the day. But some of the news reports about the Jalbert incident say that is exactly what the US border patrol demanded–one resident said he was told he could not enter his garden (located in the US; the house sits on the border) unless he went to Customs first. That's idiotic.

[vdeane]

Looks like they fixed one "house in no man's land situation".  That's one heck of a million dollar project to move a driveway! http://goo.gl/maps/Mhp6N (note: I re-used the link from another thread, so you have to close the image and go into satellite view).

Honestly, it's situations like this that demand a North American version of Schengen.  We spend so much money securing a border that doesn't need to be secured and have no common sense.  The residents of the area should march on the area and demand either a 24/7/365 staffed border station or removal of border controls in the area.

[agentsteel53]

How do places located in the no man's land between customs booths work anyways?  There are many more examples than this, including many places in Yukon on the Alaska Highway, the northern end of US 11, and currently, Cornwall Island.  I can't imagine "but I never left the country" makes life any easier at customs.

I'm a big fan of the South American way of doing things.  the border stations are set up sometimes as much as 10-15km from the border, yielding a fairly wide "frontier zone".

when you wish to move between countries, you first check out of the departing country.  then you drive down the road, cross the actual border without interaction with anyone (usually, you are completely unobserved) and then check into the arriving country.

at any point when you are not in the frontier zone, you need to have checked in to the country you are in.  i.e. you can probably run an Argentine border station after departing Chile, but once you are past the frontier and do not have a legal entry stamp, you are in the country illegally and subject to deportation.

this is quite convenient to, say, a rancher who owns land close to the frontier - occasionally, a Chilean rancher might need to wander into the Argentine section of the frontier, but unless he has business in Argentina past their entry station, he doesn't even need to check out of Chile. 

there are even certain towns which operate on this model - Chuy, Uruguay and Chui, Brazil are really one town which happens to lie on the border.  one can go there to shop duty-free, and only have to deal with customs and immigration if they intend to cross from one country to the other.

while the frontier model wouldn't work for a large urban border like San Diego/Tijuana, it certainly would allow for Estcourt, Point Roberts, Boquillas de Carmen, etc to exist with much more minimal customs formalities.

[kphoger]

Boquillas de Carmen

I've visited Boquillas with zero customs at all, back before 9/11.  Pay a guy a few bucks to row you across the river in a boat, then hire a horse or a ride in the back of a pickup to take you the rest of the way into town.

[vdeane]

How do places located in the no man's land between customs booths work anyways?  There are many more examples than this, including many places in Yukon on the Alaska Highway, the northern end of US 11, and currently, Cornwall Island.  I can't imagine "but I never left the country" makes life any easier at customs.

I'm a big fan of the South American way of doing things.  the border stations are set up sometimes as much as 10-15km from the border, yielding a fairly wide "frontier zone".

when you wish to move between countries, you first check out of the departing country.  then you drive down the road, cross the actual border without interaction with anyone (usually, you are completely unobserved) and then check into the arriving country.

at any point when you are not in the frontier zone, you need to have checked in to the country you are in.  i.e. you can probably run an Argentine border station after departing Chile, but once you are past the frontier and do not have a legal entry stamp, you are in the country illegally and subject to deportation.

this is quite convenient to, say, a rancher who owns land close to the frontier - occasionally, a Chilean rancher might need to wander into the Argentine section of the frontier, but unless he has business in Argentina past their entry station, he doesn't even need to check out of Chile. 

there are even certain towns which operate on this model - Chuy, Uruguay and Chui, Brazil are really one town which happens to lie on the border.  one can go there to shop duty-free, and only have to deal with customs and immigration if they intend to cross from one country to the other.

while the frontier model wouldn't work for a large urban border like San Diego/Tijuana, it certainly would allow for Estcourt, Point Roberts, Boquillas de Carmen, etc to exist with much more minimal customs formalities.

As much as I hate the idea of roadblocks within the country (or anywhere) I'm warming up to the idea because it would solve a ton of problems.  Unfortunately that's the kind of thing that one should think about before a bunch of cities, villages, and towns spring up on the border.

[kphoger]

Yeah, those people in Laredo shouldn't have built their city where it is (you know, along the Río Grande); they should have known that, 80 years later, an international boundary would be drawn through the middle of it.

[Duke87]

Honestly, it's situations like this that demand a North American version of Schengen.  We spend so much money securing a border that doesn't need to be secured and have no common sense.  The residents of the area should march on the area and demand either a 24/7/365 staffed border station or removal of border controls in the area.

But then the Canadian terrorists would be able to freely blow up a gas station in the middle of nowhere and no one could stop them!

[agentsteel53]

I've visited Boquillas with zero customs at all, back before 9/11.  Pay a guy a few bucks to row you across the river in a boat, then hire a horse or a ride in the back of a pickup to take you the rest of the way into town.

what about coming back?

seeing as Boquillas is on the Mexico road network (federal route 53 IIRC what you discussed in another thread), wouldn't there need to be a US customs station anyway?

[kphoger]

I've visited Boquillas with zero customs at all, back before 9/11.  Pay a guy a few bucks to row you across the river in a boat, then hire a horse or a ride in the back of a pickup to take you the rest of the way into town.

what about coming back?

seeing as Boquillas is on the Mexico road network (federal route 53 IIRC what you discussed in another thread), wouldn't there need to be a US customs station anyway?

Coming back was the same deal.  Back then, at least, there was no bridge across the river.  I imagine there might be a customs facility farther inland, but I don't really know.  I've read online that, since 9/11, people who do volunteer charity work in Boquillas wade across into México illegally with their supplies, then take a day-long bus trip through the desert to an official border crossing so they don't get zinged for entering the US illegally afterwards.  Interestingly, too, was that I saw Mexican military vehicles unloading barrels into rowboats at the Boquillas river crossing; I've always wondered what that was all about.

On the other end of Big Bend is the tiny town of Santa Elena, Chihuahua, which I've been to three times (again, a three-buck rowboat ride across the border with no customs).  I fondly remember having our picture taken with the schoolchildren and teacher after just popping into to say hi.  Even back then, when Americans occasionally visited, that town was very poor; I can imagine what it must be like now.  While not on the federal highway system, there is a desert road which connects to the rest of México; the teacher told us he was taking classes in Manuel Benavides, which he reached by bus.  I rather doubt you would encounter any customs facility from there on south; I don't even know if those roads are on the state network either.

Keep in mind, though, that this was all in the 1990s, way before 9/11.  Our world changed with 9/11.  We didn't really think about the border back then in the same way we do now (at least it seems that way to me).



Back on the topic of railways that enter other countries, yet still just anecdotal in nature..... I've never set foot in the Czech Republic, yet I have a stamp in my passport for it.  Back in the days before the EU, our family travelled from Kraków (Poland) to Vienna (Austria) by train, passing through the Czech Republic.  Upon reaching the Czech border town, the train pulled past the platform, armed guards boarded the train with dogs, they took our passports off the train into their office, then returned them to us after stamping them; the train reversed to the station, then we were on our way again.  We never so much as got out of our seats on Czech soil.  When the train entered Austria, we merely had to flash them, no stamp or anything.  A few days later, when we took the train into Germany, no one even asked to see them at all.

[kphoger]

Santa Elena, Chihuahua . . . I rather doubt you would encounter any customs facility from there on south.

I was wrong.  There is a customs post at km 204 along the state highway south of Ojinaga.  I suppose (but am not really sure) that it might be theoretically possible to take only desert roads from Santa Elena to a highway farther south, but your vehicle might fall apart before you made it.  I assume there would also be one south of Boquillas, but I'm not sure where.

[J N Winkler]

Back on the topic of railways that enter other countries, yet still just anecdotal in nature..... I've never set foot in the Czech Republic, yet I have a stamp in my passport for it.  Back in the days before the EU, our family travelled from Kraków (Poland) to Vienna (Austria) by train, passing through the Czech Republic.  Upon reaching the Czech border town, the train pulled past the platform, armed guards boarded the train with dogs, they took our passports off the train into their office, then returned them to us after stamping them; the train reversed to the station, then we were on our way again.  We never so much as got out of our seats on Czech soil.  When the train entered Austria, we merely had to flash them, no stamp or anything.  A few days later, when we took the train into Germany, no one even asked to see them at all.

This is a nitpick, but I doubt you could have been in the Czech Republic "before" the EU since both entities were created in the same year--1993.

About the Poland-Czech inspection:  that is long gone because both Poland and the Czech Republic are now part of the Schengen zone (both countries entered the EU in 2004 and implemented Schengen in 2007).  In fact all of the remotely plausible Krakow-Vienna rail itineraries are now free of passport inspections, since Hungary entered the EU and joined Schengen with Poland and the Czech Republic, while Austria has been in the EU since 1995 and has implemented Schengen since 1997.  In fact Vienna is so close to the borders of three neighboring countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) that ÖBB (the Austrian state railway) now offers an EU-Regio day excursion ticket which covers a return journey and local transport in several cities in each of the three countries.  In summer 2010 I used one of these to visit Bratislava.

The Austria-Germany border crossing has been formally passport-free since 1997.  (Germany--as West Germany at the time--was a founding member of the EU, and was later in the first group of EU countries to implement Schengen in 1995; Austria caught up two years later.)  However, in the eighties and nineties it was not uncommon for certain European countries to wave through visitors from "friendly" countries without passport inspection.  This happened for me in both directions in 2000 and 2004 at the German-Swiss border near Schaffhausen, even though I was in each case either entering or exiting the Schengen zone.  Before the Swiss implemented Schengen in 2008 and thus closed the loophole, it was not uncommon for Americans working illegally in Paris to travel to Switzerland to keep their passport stamps "fresh."

Schengen is a lot stricter now than it used to be.  I was last in the zone in 2010, entering at Lisbon and leaving 86 days later at Berlin.  At Schönefeld Airport an agent of the Bundespolizei went through my passport with a jeweler's loupe, trying to find the almost illegible entry stamp which a bored Portuguese police officer had put in with an almost-dry stamp at Portola Airport in Lisbon.  I knew where it was and could have pointed it out to him, but it was his job to find it, not mine to volunteer the information and cause him to wonder why I was being so helpful.  At length he looked up and said something to me.  I played dumb (always safe when you are deaf and confronted with immigration officers).  Finally his colleague in the next desk told him to let me go, and down the stamp went, after being meticulously inked.

[kphoger]

Sorry.  I should have said it was before Poland and the Czech Republic were part of the EU.  1999, to be precise, which makes all your other comments fall perfectly in line.  Thank you for the clarification.