Northernmost Point of USA is in Canada: Northwest Angle, MN 📍
The top point of the lower 48 isn't really in the lower 48 (📍Bonkers Borders Series)
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The Northernmost Point in the USA is in Canada:
Northwest Angle, MN, USA
You may have never heard of it, but it’s actually the northernmost place in the contiguous US.
It’s so north that it actually doesn’t touch any other part of the states by land.
And it’s like that bc someone used the wrong map to draw a line… seriously.
This is the Northwest angle – it is part of Minnesota and is the only bit of US border that goes above the 49th parallel.
When politicians negotiated the US-Canada border in the late 1700s, they agreed to put the line at the northernmost tip of a lake that their map seemed to show was the start of the Mississippi River.
Turns out the map was totally off, and the lake they used was way more part of Canada than it showed.
Great part of the story, or worst part depending on your perspective, is that everyone had plenty of chances to correct the error early on, including when the same folks decided on the 49th parallel to be the border for the rest of the way west… That’s an easy straight line from Minnesota all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
But, somehow, they felt changing this agreement was harder than moving international borders, so the US kept this small slice of heaven.
The Northwest Angle today has about 100 residents – US citizens – who have to cross two border crossings to reach the rest of their home state of Minnesota.