How Far To The Colorado Border

America loves its straight-line borders. The only U.S. state without one is Hawaii – for obvious reasons (1).

West of the Mississippi, states are bigger, emptier and boxier than dorsum East. From a distance, all seem to be made upward of straight lines.

But when you zoom in do yous meet their squiggly $.25: the northeast corner of Kansas, for example. Or Montana'due south western border with Idaho that looks like a human face up. Or Oklahoma's southern border with Texas, meandering as information technology follows the Red River.

New Mexico comes tantalisingly close to having only straight-line borders. In that location's that short stretch due north of El Paso that would take been but 15 miles (24 km) long if information technology was straight instead of wavy.

No, there are only three states whose borders are entirely made up of straight lines: Utah, which would have been a rectangle if Wyoming hadn't bitten a chunk out of its northeastern corner; Wyoming itself; plus Colorado.

Red: states with just straight-line borders. Xanthous: states with some straight-line borders. Dark-green: states without straight-line borders. Image: mapchart.cyberspace

Except that they aren't. For ii singled-out reasons: because the earth is round, and because those 19th-century surveyors laying out state borders fabricated mistakes.

Congress divers the borders of Colorado as a geospherical rectangle, stretching from 37°North to 41°N latitude, and from 25°W to 32°W longitude (2). While lines of latitude run in parallel circles that don't see, lines of longitude converge at the poles.

Which means that Colorado's longitudinal borders are slightly farther apart in the southward. And then if you'd look closely enough, the state resembles an isosceles trapezoid (3) rather than a rectangle. Consequently, the state'southward northern borderline is about 22 miles (35 km) shorter than its southern one. The aforementioned goes, mutatis mutandis, for Wyoming.

That's not where the story ends. There's boundary delimitation: the theoretical clarification of a border, as described above. But what's more relevant is purlieus demarcation: surveying and marker out the edge on the ground. Colorado entered the Union in 1876.

Only in 1879 did the first purlieus survey team get around to translating Congress's abstruse into actual boundary markers. The official border would not be the delimited one, just the demarcated ane. Unfortunately, 19th-century surveyors lacked satellites and other high-precision measurement tools.

Let's non be too harsh: considering the size of the task and the limitation of their tools — magnetic compasses and metal chains — they did an incredible job. They had to pale straight lines irrespective of terrain, often through inhospitable land.

But yes, errors were made — and were in fact quite habitual. Have for case the 49th parallel, which for more than than i,200 miles forms the international edge between the U.Due south. and Canada. Rather than beingness a straight line, it zigzags between the 912 purlieus monuments established by successive teams of surveyors (the last ones in 1872–4). The markers deviate by every bit much as 575 feet north and 784 anxiety south of the actual parallel line.

Colorado, not as rectangular as yous think. Image: FascinatingMaps.com

The same kind of thing happened when the kickoff surveying teams went out to demarcate the Colorado border. This map magnifies four of the most egregious surveying inaccuracies, where the difference between the boundaries delineated by Congress and the border demarcated by the surveyors is greatest.

Four Corners. Clockwise from summit left: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona. Paradigm source: Getty Artistic

Four Corners (and four more)

Located in a dusty, desolate corner of the desert, the Four Corners monument seems very far from the middle of anything. Yet this is the meeting point of four states: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. It is the only quadripoint in the United States (4). The monument'due south exact location is at 36°59'56″Northward, 109°02'43″West.

However, it's non where Congress had decreed the four states to come across. That point is about 560 feet (170 m) northwest of the quadripoint's current location, at 37°N, 109°02'48″Westward. Did you bulldoze all the style through the desert to miss the actual betoken by a few hundred feet?

No, y'all didn't: in 1925, the Supreme Court ruled that the borders equally surveyed were the correct ones. But maybe the original quadripoint deserves a pocket-sized marking of its own, if only to provide the site with an extra allure. Or why non get for three? Some sources say the original betoken deviates by one,807 anxiety (551 m).

Paradox Valley in Colorado, well-nigh the (crooked) border with Utah. Paradigm source: Wikimedia Commons/Tony Webster, CC Past 2.0

 The La Sal/Paradox difference

In 1879, a survey political party marched northward from Iv Corners, placing markers at every mile. The surveyors eventually reached the Wyoming border, but not where they thought they'd stop upwardly. After surveys, in 1885 and 1893, establish out where the original surveyors had gone wrong, but by that fourth dimension the border as surveyed had get the official one. Changing it would have required both Colorado and Utah to concord on a solution, and Congress to corroborate it.

The biggest error occurs only s of the road connecting La Sal, Utah to Paradox, Colorado. Across an eight-mile stretch, the surveyors strayed westward before regaining true north. The resulting departure is 3860 feet (1.18 km).

Edge deviation near Edith, CO. Image source: Google Maps/Ruland Kolen

I

Things get south afterwards Edith

W to east, Colorado's border with New United mexican states starts out fairly straight. However, just east of Edith, the border swerves southeast for well-nigh three,400 feet (1 km) before resuming its course due e, now 2,820 anxiety (860 m) further south than earlier.

Why? It seems that for once, the surveyors have given in to the dictates of topography: the divergence follows a small-scale valley oriented northwest-southeast.

The Colorado border swerves south, eating into the Oklahoma Panhandle. Image source: FascinatingMaps.com

Panhandling into Oklahoma

Well-nigh at the terminate of their surveying mission, information technology seems the party lost the plot once more. In the concluding 53 miles (85 km) before the edge turns due north, the stretch where Colorado rubs against Oklahoma, the line over again swerves to the south, by as much as 1,770 feet (540 m).

Don't blame the terrain: appropriately for a place so close to the Oklahoma Panhandle, it's as flat as a pancake. Perhaps the surveyors were confused by the very featurelessness of the place.

Each dot is a twist in Colorado's supposedly straight borders. Paradigm source: FascinatingMaps.com

Colorado is a 697-sider

These are simply four of the biggest, almost easily spotted surveying errors. In total, Colorado'due south borders have hundreds twists and turns — almost much smaller than the Big Four. Here they are: every dot on is a border deviation, as indicated on the OpenStreetMap of Colorado.

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Appropriately, the state has not just four sides, just a full of 697 sides. And so if Colorado is non a rectangle, what is it? Well, not a pentagon, (Greek for 5-sider), hexagon (6-sider) or a heptagon (7-sider), but a — concur on to something — hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon (697-sider).

Wyoming: just as fallible as Colorado — simply more than willing to admit its mistakes. Image source: FascinatingMaps.com

Don't go your hopes up, Wyoming

With Colorado thoroughly disqualified to as ane of America'due south two truly rectangular states, does that leave Wyoming holding the crown all on its ain? Nope. Turns out the surveyors who plotted the Equality State's outline were just equally fallible as the Colorado set.

This map shows a few larger ones of the many deviations in on all iv sides of Wyoming. Interestingly, the deviations shown come in pairs, whereby the second ones seem to right the deviation of the first ones.

Then, while Wyoming is just every bit imperfect every bit Colorado, it does seem that at to the lowest degree it is better at albeit (and correcting) its mistakes than its southern neighbour.

Maps of Colorado and Wyoming both past FascinatingMaps.com.

Strange Maps #945

Got a strange map? Allow me know at [email protected].

(1) If yous're not into the whole obviousness thing: Hawaii is a bunch of islands, which therefore don't have a land edge — neither with other U.S. states or third countries.

(2) That'south w of the Washington Elevation — the third one, to be exact. Over fourth dimension, 4 Washington meridians were defined every bit prime meridians for the U.South. They passed through the Capitol, the White House, the Quondam Naval Observatory and the New Naval Observatory. Defined by Congress in 1850 at 77°2'48.0″W of Greenwich, the third Washington tiptop was used as the base line for a number of western state borders, including:

• at 17°W, a stretch of border with Texas in the west, and Arkansas and Louisiana in the east. This line passes through the two-country conurbation of Texarkana;
• at 25°W, the Colorado-Kansas border (and office of the Nebraska-Colorado border);
• at 26°W, a stretch of the border between Texas and New Mexico (the Oklahoma-New United mexican states border, merely to the north, is set dorsum two miles to the east);
• at 27°Due west, the 555-mile stretch from Colorado north to the Canadian border, separating Montana and Wyoming in the w from the Dakotas and Nebraska in the east;
• at 32°Westward, the straight line from Wyoming to Mexico, separating Utah and Arizona in the west from Colorado and New Mexico in the eastward (also running through Four Corners, where these four states meet).

Divers from the at present standard Greenwich Pinnacle, the eastern and western extremities of Colorado are 102°2'48″W to 109°2'48″W, respectively

(3) An isosceles trapezoid is a four-sided shape with two parallel sides and 2 not-parallel simply equal sides.

(four) The merely state-level quadripoint. There are, in fact, dozens of quadripoints between U.South. counties, hundreds betwixt U.S. municipalities, and indeed thousands (of usually bilateral ones) on the edges of checkerboard-patterned Indian reservations and other federally reserved territories.

Source: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/colorado-is-not-a-rectangle/

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