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The WEIRDEST Borders Between U.S. States
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Mar 31, 2025
Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months free here https://nordvpn.com/knowledge It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! In this episode of General Knowledge I talk about some of the strangest border situations between US States. Like the strange Kentucky Bend which is disconnected from the rest of Kentucky and attached to Tennessee. Or the odd situation of Carter Lake in Iowa, in connection to Nebraska - which also hosts an Iowan exclava through the Desoto National Wildlife Refuge Park. Also addressing the 'shared' status of Ellis Island and Liberty Island between New York and New Jersey (due to territorial waters). Plus the Lost Peninsula of Michigan within Ohio, consequence of the Toledo War. Finally wrapping up with Newport County in Rhode Island which is territorially disconnected from this State and only connected by land to the neighboring Massachusetts. Become a member on Patreon & get your name in the credits + exclusive content! https://www.patreon.com/generalknowledge TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Weird Borders 00:52 The Kentucky Bend (Kentucky / Tennessee) 02:43 NordVPN Special Offer 04:11 Carter Lake (Iowa / Nebraska) 05:24 Ellis Island (New York / New Jersey) 06:50 Liberty Island (New York / New Jersey) 07:05 Lost Peninsula of Michigan (Michigan / Ohio) 08:09 Desoto National Wildlife Refuge (Iowa / Nebraska) 09:11 Newport County (Rhode Island / Massachusetts) 10:14 Patreon Credits 10:48 Moomin Cup Stay up to date on more content from me:
View Video Transcript
0:00
Borders can be pretty weird
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I mean you remember that border between the Netherlands and Belgium that's kind of like
0:06
a patchwork of territory with sometimes borderlines going inside of houses. Point Roberts in the US is another notable exclave of Washington state, located on the
0:17
southern tip of the Tswassen Peninsula in Canada. Similar to Elm Point in Minnesota, a small uninhabited Cape exclave of the United States
0:26
surrounded by a lake and only accessible by land via Canada. And this happens all across the world
0:32
both between one country and another, but also inside a country between its regions
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So in this video, we are going to learn about some of those between US states
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By the way, in this video, I'm going back to the whiteboard animation a little bit
0:56
just to go back and forth and not switch the style up completely
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So let's start with the one on the thumbnail, the Kentucky Bend. The Kentucky Bend, also called the New Madrid Bend
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is an exclave of Fulton County, Kentucky, encircled by the states of Tennessee and Missouri
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It is a portion of a peninsula within the Mississippi River. As of the 2020 census, its population was only of nine people
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but historically, due to its highly productive soil in the river's floodplain
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the Kentucky Bend was developed as a major cotton-producing area, housing more than 300 people
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by 1870. On the map, you can see the craziness of the situation. The Kentucky exclave is completely
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separated and actually quite distant from the rest of Kentucky. Not only does it border Tennessee
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exclusively by land, but the rest of its borders are the Mississippi River, which in turn are
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completely surrounded by the state of Missouri, which sort of bends around the peninsula. But the
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Porter actually predates the separation of Kentucky from the territory of Virginia and Tennessee from North Carolina
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Its location stems from the Royal Colony Boundary of 1665, which was meant to set the boundaries of the colonies at the time
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In 1812, this area of the river was highly disrupted and was reported to even flow backwards because of the 1811 New Madrid earthquakes
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some of the most powerful ever felt in the United States, so perhaps the exclave wasn't a reality
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back then. Upon statehood, Tennessee contested the inclusion of the band in Kentucky, claiming it
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until at least 1848, but eventually dropping this claim. A fun fact, the Kentucky band is the scenery
2:35
for a book by Mark Twain called Life on the Mississippi, where he describes the feud between
2:41
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money back guarantee. And now let's get back to the video. Then moving on to Carter Lake
4:13
a situation between Iowa and Nebraska. Carter Lake is an exclave of Iowa. It is completely
4:19
surrounded by land by the state of Nebraska and separated from the rest of Iowa by the Missouri
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River. The population was 3,791 at the 2020 census, so a good amount of Iowans live in this
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exclave. What's incredibly interesting is that while it's unsure if the Kentucky Bend started
4:36
as not being an exclave, we can be 100% sure that Carter Lake was in fact not one at first
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Before 1877, the Missouri River flowed through the north of what is today the exclave
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In fact, you can see the remnants of the old river course on the map, which is now called
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the Saratoga Bend, forming Carter Lake itself. What happened was that in March of 1877, a large flood redirected the course of the river
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2 kilometers to the southeast. Despite the inconvenience of turning the area into an exclave, the formation of the
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lake actually turned the surrounding land into a flourishing recreational area around
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the lake itself. Nebraska contested the ownership of it by Iowa and the case went all the way to the
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US Supreme Court in 1892 with the ruling being in favor of Iowa
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Another crazy example I didn't know about is Ellis Island which is kind of shared between
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New York and New Jersey. Another crazy example I didn know about is Ellis Island Located in the New York Arbor on the Hudson River and being a historically relevant place for the arrival of thousands upon thousands of migrants into the United States Ellis Island has a strange border situation It is first of all a federally owned island
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which means that the federal US government actually owns it rather than the states
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But still, the borders on the map are weird. The original portion of Ellis Island is a part of New
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York, but the surrounding artificial infill belongs to New Jersey, and this has created a
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unique split jurisdiction on the same island. We can see it here on this map from 1998. In green is
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the area of the original natural island, part of New York, while the man-made rest of the island is
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part of New Jersey. The island is, as we can see, filled by the same interconnected buildings, so
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what ends up happening is that while you are walking in the building, you actually move from
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one state to the other, creating a rather odd situation where the green area is an exclave of
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York. The natural island was in fact originally part of New York however as it began being
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artificially expanded New Jersey began claiming jurisdiction over it as the expansions stretched
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outside of New York's area. The case also went to the Supreme Court in 1998 and this strange
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conclusion was reached. And a similar situation exists with Liberty Island which is a part of New
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York but is completely surrounded by the waters of New Jersey. This is because New York claimed
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the island long before state waters were demarcated and both states agreed to the solution in 1834
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Another really interesting case can be found in the lost peninsula of Michigan and they share this
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border with Ohio which is a very very small exclave of Michigan, the top of a peninsula that is
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in its southern part, mostly part of Ohio. About 140 people live in it today but why are they
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citizens of Michigan instead of Ohio. Why wasn't the border just drawn around it, allowing Ohio to
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keep the whole of the peninsula? The answer is the result of the Toledo War boundary dispute
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in 1835, which was fought between the two states to determine whether the state of Ohio or the
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Michigan territory would control an area known as the Toledo Strip. I believe it's a rare example of
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a war being fought between two US states. After the Toledo War, the state border was established
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at approximately the 41 degrees, 44 minutes north latitude line, just north of the mouth
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of the Maume River. This gave the river and the city of Toledo to the state of Ohio, however the state line
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continued across the smaller Ottawa River and divided the peninsula on the far side
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of it. Moving to the interior we have the case of the De Soto National Wildlife Refuge, also
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between Iowa and Nebraska which has a pretty interesting situation. The boundary irregularity arose due to historical changes in the river's course, leading to
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portions of Nebraska ending up on the Iowa side. The refuge spans both states and serves as a habitat for migratory birds and other wildlife What is strange is that the change in the river course was not natural but instead man In 1960 an Army Corps of Engineers moved the main river channel in the area to the west
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The former river channel became the Soto Lake, a 7-mile-long oxbow lake
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As a result, part of the Nebraska portion of the refuge lies on the east side of the Missouri River
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It's unclear to me if the move was made in the context of the wildlife refuge
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to provide the protected species with a lake. Being done like this, I would imagine it happened with the agreement of Iowa
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making the exclave a weird border situation, but not an issue between the two states
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And one more example where water is an obstacle is Newport County in Rhode Island
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The mainland portion of this county is separated from the rest of Rhode Island by the Taunton River
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requiring travel through Massachusetts to reach it by land. You can see it well on this map, where the areas in red are the Newport County belonging to the state of Rhode Island in light beige
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However, while most of the county is a set of islands, this easternmost area is not
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belonging instead to a peninsula whose jurisdiction is of the neighboring state of Massachusetts
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The reason why is mostly historical. Originally, these areas were part of land claims by Plymouth Colony, which later became part of Massachusetts
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but in 1746 a royal decree adjusted the boundary awarding them to Rhode Island
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This adjustment was based on the settlement patterns and the desire to provide Rhode Island with additional territory
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to balance land distribution among the colonies at the time. So those are some of the border irregularities between US states
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and between one state and Canada. But let me know what you think in the comments
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along with any other suggestions of weird borders that you know about either between two countries or like this inside a specific country
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be it the United States or somewhere else. Thank you so much for watching this video
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Thank you to my patrons for supporting me directly. If you want to access exclusive content, you know, you just have to join there as well
10:34
And either way, thank you for watching and I will see you next time for more general knowledge
10:38
this week's Moomin Cup is a repeat I think I've shown this before it's the sailing Moomin and then
10:55
on the other side he has like he's going he's going on an expedition I guess he's going somewhere
11:00
I feel like when I was a kid, so many cartoons had this, like the stick with the little bag hanging from it
11:12
It was like it was a huge reality in the world, and you'd never really see it, you know
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It's like Quicksand. We learn about Quicksand so much, and then it's just not a part of our daily lives
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But it's good to see that it's a part of Moomin's daily life
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