Boundry Folks,
What a thrill to find you!!
For years I have been fascinated by borders and
enclaves. As a kid, I hunted down geopolitical
anomalies in the school library atlas. As an adult who
could drive a car and buy a plane ticket, I trekked to
a number of seemingly odd locations. Until now I
thought I was alone in having this peculiar interest
but now that I have found you I can tell my wife that
it could much worse, I could be as addicted to this
stuff as the folks here are.
Reading your postings I am now humbled. I realize that
my level of knowledge and dedication to the study of
geopolitical odd bits is dwarfed by what I find here.
Nevertheless, I am delighted to have found you and
look forward to learning from all you.
If you will indulge me I will share a few of my border
experiences. I think you have covered all this before
and I hope you don't mind if I repeat the topics a
bit.
Beebe Plain, Vermont
I should start off with my native state of Vermont. I
stumbled across the situation in the famous little
border town quite innocently. I was driving into
Quebec from Vermont through Beebe Plain when all of a
sudden I noticed that I was behind a HydroQuebec power
company truck and I thought to myself how odd to see
this truck in VT. Then I looked to my right and saw
Quebec flags on the porches and then to my left where
I saw US and Vermont flags ... I was driving right on
the border, without going through a border crossing.
How delightful!
Baarle, Netherlands/Belgium
Last summer when my wife and I were visiting my Dutch
relatives I almost had a chance to visit this
extraordinary enclave that I "found" as kid. But alas,
my wife wasn't quite up to the detour but she did
indulge me in the NL-DE-BE tripoint ...
Ceuta, Spanish North Africa
The cheapest and fastest way from Spain to Morocco was
through Tangiers but of course I went through Ceuta
...
Point Roberts, WA
On a trip to Vancouver from Seattle I made my way
through Point Roberts, of course. I was walking along
the border when a kid kicked a ball across from the
Canadian side and I then tossed it back over the
border. Does that make me a smuggler?
Has anyone been to Lake of the Woods, MN? Does anyone
know the history behind this jig in the US/CA border?
Wandering Mississippi
Has anyone noticed how the Mississippi doesn't respect
state borders? Here's a good example of the result on
the Arkansas / Alabama border:
http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?BFCat=&Pyt=Tmap&addr=&city=Little+Rock&state=AR&slt=34.746399&sln=-92.289398&mlt=34.772100&mln=-90.509500&zip=&country=us&mag=7&cs=7&BFClient=&poi=&poititle=&map.x=201&map.y=209
Are there any international examples of this? What
happens when a river boundary moves?
I hate to be so abrupt but that will have to be it for
now ... I need to get back to work.
Jonathan Hubbard
San Francisco
ps. How did Baarle happen? Is this left over from the
1830 Belgian "Revolution"?
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