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Why are the U.S. state borders so WEIRD? Basically it boils down to a series of political reasons mixed with a healthy obsession with aligning borders to latitude and longitude lines. But this gave us a country with borders that look very fake. So I decided to FIX them using natural features. Here are your much more natural U.S. state borders.
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The United States is a mess
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As it grew from east to west, it acquired territories, carved them up, divided them even more
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and eventually made them all into individual states. But this process made no sense
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and many states were divided and created for stupid political reasons rather than anything natural
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When all was said and done, we ended up with a country whose state borders look very... fake
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So I decided to fix them. Mostly along natural borders, but also there's some other stuff too
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And before you get too riled up, this is gonna be fun. Probably
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The first place I want to start as we fix borders are the states that are essentially just duplicates
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that were formed for reasons that never really made sense in the first place
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The biggest culprit here is North and South Dakota. These two states were originally created out of a single territory called Dakota
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But when the territory was about to be admitted as a full state
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it was quickly divided into two states in order to give the Republican Party at the time
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a congressional advantage. Basically, we have two Dakotas for political reasons and nothing more
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so they're now back to just being called Dakota. Up next are the Carolinas
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Now, these two date back before the United States was even a thing
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so maybe there's an argument to keep them separate, but I'm not going to do that
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These two colonies split because of a war with a local indigenous tribe
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The northerners at the time required more resources to acquire the land they wanted
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and the southerners didn't really want to help, so they split. Well, that doesn't seem like a good enough reason for divorce to me
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so now they're back to being just Carolina. And finally, we have the two Virginias
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But, unlike with the other two, I'm going to keep these two separate
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mostly because West Virginia broke away so as to stay with the Union during the American Civil War
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and, well, I think that's a very good reason to become a separate state
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Nice job, West Virginia. Alright, with those states out of the way, let's get to fixing the rest of the borders
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And we're going to start with the square states in the West. The United States has some wacky borders, mostly in the western half of the country
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So we're going to chop all of these states up and break them apart, largely along natural features
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This means using the continental divide, mountain ranges, rivers, and deserts to make these
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new borders, mostly in that order. So let's get to it. Now, given its prominence, we're going to start by dividing the states up by the Rocky
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Mountains and the continental divide that runs through it. So from north to south Montana Wyoming Colorado and New Mexico all get split in half with their former Western sides joining the states of Idaho Utah and Arizona respectively This already makes way
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more sense in my head. Let's keep heading West since we're going in that direction and focus on
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Nevada. Nevada is mostly one big desert. In fact, I ranked it the state with the worst geography
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because of this. So why not double down and just give them the deserts of California and Oregon as
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well? Done. This leaves California a little top-heavy, but most of its population is in the
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south still, so it evens out. Maybe? And this just leaves Oregon and Washington. Honestly
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both states are mostly fine except for one thing. Oregon is largely divided along the Columbia and
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Snake Rivers. But in the northeast of Oregon, instead of the border following the Snake River
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it just cuts straight across. So we're just going to add that missing chunk back to Oregon and call
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it a day. As for the other western states, just a few minor changes. The Dakotas are, of course
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just a single state now. Done. Nebraska and Kansas are mostly fine, except Kansas City is now in
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Kansas. Come on, guys, that one should be obvious. And then we're going to give Texas's hat to
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Oklahoma to get rid of that wonky little panhandle, and we'll make this divide along the Red River
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Texas is way too big anyways, so it's time to slim up just a little bit
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The west has been fixed, mostly. Things are still a little awkward, but it looks a lot more natural now
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So let's move on to the rest of the states. The eastern half of the United States is not in nearly as bad of shape
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so our fixes over here will be relatively minor compared to the western, blockier half
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But there's still some things I want to change. First, let's head to the Deep South
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This whole area is wrong. First, Louisiana is the only state that doesn't get divided up by the Mississippi River
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But we can't have New Orleans and Baton Rouge and Mississippi, so we'll make a concession here
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The eastern side of Louisiana up to Lake Pontchartrain will now be part of Mississippi
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excluding Baton Rouge. Which is a little weird, but still worth it
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Next, Florida has a really long panhandle, preventing it from being a true peninsular state
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So, let's just go ahead and give the western edge of Florida's panhandle to Alabama
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It's not like Florida needs more coastline anyways. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that that part of Florida is more culturally Alabama anyways
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Moving north from Florida, we actually have another continental divide. This is the divide that largely follows the Appalachian Range
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And just like with the Rockies we going to split up all of the states along this line So that means that Georgia Carolina which was already merged together Virginia West Virginia Maryland and Pennsylvania are all split The eastern side will remain their
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own states, but the western ends will join Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia
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and Ohio. The latter two split along the Ohio River. Now, you might have noticed that the
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Appalachian Continental Divide goes north into New York. You're not wrong to think that this
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might necessitate a split. But I decided not to split it in half because the only logical state
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that would absorb that land would be Ohio. And I just couldn't bring myself to make Ohio even bigger
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So New York stays as is. Now, before we head too far north, there's one other thing we gotta fix
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the Delmarva Peninsula. Right now, it's split between Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia
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with Delaware really getting shafted here. So it's now all Delaware. As for the rest of the Northeast, it's fine
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There's nothing too obvious here to fix. New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island
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Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine get to keep their current borders
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Congratulations on either not being awkward enough for me to fix your borders
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or for being so small that if I changed anything, it would be a literal existential crisis. This just leaves us with the Midwest to straighten out
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So let's start with Michigan. I'm sorry, but you can't have the Upper Peninsula anymore
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It's physically connected to Wisconsin and therefore should belong to them. But in exchange
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you can have the Toledo Strip back from Ohio, which is what you wanted originally. I'm not
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really sure what that does for you today, but it is what it is. And that's basically it. The rest
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are mostly fine. In fact, Minnesota might have the most perfect borders of any contiguous U.S
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state. It's mostly made up of the Minnesota, St. Croix, and Mississippi rivers aside from a few
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straight areas and its southern border. But we'll just blame the southern border on Iowa. Indiana
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Illinois, and Arkansas rounds out the last of the lower 48 and they're all passable
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with nothing obvious to fix about them. I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize
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And, of course, there's Alaska and Hawaii. But obviously, neither can have their borders changed because they don't border anyone else
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Well, Alaska does border Canada, but we're not going international with this video
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There's one final thing you might have noticed. I combined four states into two states, which means we only have 48 states
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Now, maybe you're not a patriot, but I demand that the old stars and stripes have 50 full stars on them
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So we gotta add a couple states This is actually pretty easy because in case you were unaware the United States owns territories that are not full states within the country So we can cobble
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together some states from there, right? The most obvious full state to include would be Puerto Rico
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It has more people than 19 other states, and as such, makes no sense to keep it as a territory in
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my eyes. So welcome aboard Puerto Rico. And because they're nearby and also a territory
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we're going to add the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of Puerto Rico. Next up are the territories
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of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Now these two territories are pretty small
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but strategically they're very important. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to
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combine both into a single state called Mariana because the whole island chain for both is called
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the Mariana Islands. It will be the smallest state by population by far, but when Nevada was admitted
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to the Union, there were fewer than 8,000 people living there. So I think we can manage. As for
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American Samoa, it kind of feels like it should be unified with Samoa, but that's really not for
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me to decide. So we'll leave them as a territory for now. And as for Washington DC, I'm just gonna
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leave it as is until the politicians figure it out. Basically, I'm not touching it. It can stay
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as a little half square for now. But there we have it. We got our two stars back
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with Puerto Rico and Mariana making for a full 50 states once again
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We did it. So it's the morning of the day that this video gets published
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on November 4th, 2024. And I've been working on it now for about 18 hours straight
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I am tired. This video is a little rougher than my usual episodes
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and for that, I do apologize. But I scrambled to pull this episode together last minute
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because tomorrow is the big day here in the United States. And I wanted to make and publish this video
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because a lot of people have been talking about fixing the United States for a while now
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But the reality is that we all have to play our part in fixing and improving this country
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And the only way we can play that part is by voting
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So please, go vote by the end of the day tomorrow, or else we may actually end up with a country
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that looks like this. All right, I'm gonna go take a nap now
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But also, if this video got you really jazzed about the current United States
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then maybe you would like a beautiful map of the country to adorn your walls, one I definitely did not fix
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Every map you buy from my map store, of course, helps support this channel
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But go vote. I would rather you vote than buy anything. I hope you enjoyed this off-the-wall geography episode
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If you did, please like the video and subscribe to my channel. And if you want to watch more of my videos, you can
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Thanks for watching. See you next week
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