[Paddlewise] US-Canada Border

>>
That certainly shows my ignorance although anything North of Jacksonville is
the "frozen North"!

cya
>>

Just to enlighten you further, part of Minnesota is *above* the 49th
parallel. It's called the Northwest Angle, and the dry land part is cut off
from the rest of the USA by water, so the residents have to drive through
Canada to get to the main part of Minnesota. 

It's the result of geographic ignorance. At the time of the Treaty of Paris,
the border between the US and Canada was defined as along the customary fur
trade route to the northwest corner of Lake of the Woods, and thence west to
the Mississippi River, which was the original western border of the US. What
they didn't know in 1783 was that the Mississippi didn't originate that far
north. The 49th parallel was established as the border west from the
Northwest Angle only after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and some later
disputes about the border farther west in the Oregon Territory. 

As a sidebar to this sidebar, in the first half of the 19th century, the
British tried to claim the St. Louis River as the customary fur trade route,
which would have put Duluth and the present Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Wilderness in Ontario. The US negotiators made a counterclaim on the
Kaministikwia River route, which would have put Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the
US border, and made Quetico Provincial Park part of Minnesota. The
Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which settled the present boundary between the US
and Canada, compromised on the Pigeon River route, which was the one
intended in 1783 anyway. An interesting provision of that treaty that is
relevant to canoeists in the Boundary Waters and Quetico today (to get back
to the topic of paddling) gives travelers along the border the right to use
the customary portages along the route regardless of which side of the
border they happen to be on.

Chuck Holst
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