When drawing boundaries for the newly formed nation, Britain and the United States agreed that America's northern border west of Lake Superior would run through the middle of a stream to the northwestern most point at Lake of the Woods and from there run due west until it hit the Mississippi River. This decision was based off of John Mitchell's widely used map of eastern North America, that showed Lake of the Woods as an egg shaped body of water with a clear northwestern most point and that going west from there would cross the Mississippi.
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| Mitchell's depiction of Lake of the Woods |
In 1798, this belief was proven false by British explorer David Thompson, confirming a boundary gap, and after the Louisiana Purchase the British and Americans once again had to define the northern border of the newly acquired territory. After years of negotiation, the border issue was finally resolved at the Convention of 1818. The two sides agreed that a line would be drawn directly south from the northwestern most part of Lake of the Woods down to the 49th parallel and then the border would follow that line until the continental divide at the Rocky Mountains. This treaty officially created the Northwest Angle, but it was not actually discovered until 1825 when Johann Ludwig Tiarks, an astronomer employed by the British, determined where the northwestern most point of Lake of the Woods was. There were further investigations into the exact boundaries of the Angle in the following years and the Canadians and British offered to buy the land to resolve the issue, but the U.S. refused to accept so as not to change the treaty under which they had gained their independence.
In 1998 there was an issue between Canada and the residents of the Angle regarding fishing laws. Canadian laws prevented non-Canadians staying on the American side from taking any fish from Canadian waters. This was devastating to the livelihood of the Angle's residents who were completely reliant on tourists who came there to fish. In response, Minnesota proposed a bill that would create millions of dollars in fees each year for the Canadian National Railway that went through northern Minnesota. This dispute, known as the Walleye War after the walleye fish in the lake, resulted in both sides dropping their harmful legislation.
Bibliography:
https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2014/02/story-behind-minnesotas-weirdly-shaped-northern-border
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170824-the-us-land-lost-in-canada
Today the Angle remains there with little more than a few fishing lodges and a total population of 60 as of the 2010 census. An ever enduring remnant of this nation's independence.
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| Map of the Northwest Angle |
Bibliography:
https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2014/02/story-behind-minnesotas-weirdly-shaped-northern-border
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170824-the-us-land-lost-in-canada
Ari, this is a interesting tidbit of history that remains from the very beginning of America as a country. I enjoyed learning a strange fact about the border. Something that I found interesting with the Northwest Angle was that America decided to keep the area, and refused to sell it to Canada. The stated reason was the American's did not want to change the treaty that gave them their independence, but why? Was it because it was symbolic of the struggle that they had fought so hard to overcome? Or was it part of larger sense of American desire to keep the land they had and expand and fulfill their manifest destiny? The likely answer would be the first, but one might never know for sure. We can only postulate about the reasoning behind the decision that led to this funky outcrop of land that is really part of the U.S.
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