Geographic oddities
 

I know we had a thread on this subject, and if someone remembers who started it, this one can be merged with it, but what are some of the geographic quirks of your city and state or province?

For example, I just read that Dalhart, Texas in the panhandle is closer to Santa Fe, N.M.; Oklahoma City; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Lincoln, Neb.; Topeka, Kan.; and Denver than it is to Austin.

Big Diomede (Russia) and Little Diomede (Alaska) always intrigued me since I was kid since the Soviet Union seemed so far away and was our mortal enemy but were in reality, closer to the US than Cuba; about a mile.

There is a Kansas City in Missouri, but there is no Missouri City in Kansas.

There is a Missouri City in Texas.

Counterintuitive (to me):
Reno is farther West than LA
Pittsburgh is farther East than Miami
Seattle is farther North than Quebec City
Santiago (Chile) is farther East than NYC

Oddities:

Premier, BC is accessible by road only through Hyder, AK, accessible by road only through Stewart, BC

The road network here, due to poor diplomatic relations, is insane:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.8815393,44.4295176,11z

There’s two sections of Erie Township, Michigan that’s only accessible by land from Toledo, Ohio. They’re located at the end of two peninsulas in Lake Erie.

Miami is closer to the capital cities of 2 foreign countries than it is to the capital of its own state (closer to Nassau and Havana than Tallahassee).

I'm not surprised by Pittsburgh, and Seattle makes sense once you visualize the map in your head, but my brain just doesn't want to accept that Reno is farther west than LA is. That is a weird one.

And, yeah, Santiago. Especially considering it's on the west coast of South America. A lot of Americans take for granted that South America is more or less south of North America, but at least 95% of the continent is actually east of North America.

We also tend to think of Europe as being east of the US, but the bulk of the US is actually more in line with Africa than Europe. And if you draw a straight line from the west coast of Europe, you end up on the northern/northeast coast of South America.

El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than it is to Beaumont.

The northeast tip of Tennessee is closer to downtown Toronto than it is to the southwest tip of Tennessee.

Cumberland Gap, Virginia, is closer to 9 other state capitals than to Richmond:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EtMnldTX...pg&name=medium

Not really geography, but there is no such thing as "Washington, D.C." Washington was abolished in 1871 (as was Georgetown). The District of Columbia assumed the municipal functions of both.

Yet we still call it Washington, even though it hasn't existed for 150 years.

Even though the Missouri River is the dividing line between Iowa and Nebraska, there is a community that exists on the Nebraska side of the river, called Carter Lake, that is part of Iowa. It is surrounded by the city of Omaha, Nebraska, and is completely cut off from the rest of Iowa unless one were to launch a boat across the Missouri River. Otherwise, Carter Lake residents must go through Nebraska to reach the rest of Iowa. The border oddity is due to flooding in the 1800s that caused the Missouri River to be redirected further south which cut off Carter Lake from the rest of Iowa.

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.town...c04d.image.jpg
source

Follett, TX (the northeasternmost town in the Panhandle) is closer to Fargo and Minneapolis than it is to Brownsville, TX.

Meanwhile, Brownsville is closer to parts of Guatemala than to Dalhart.

Does it seem like Santiago Chile is Closer to Tijuana Mexico than it is to Montréal Canada?

Beaumont is actually a little closer to El Paso than it is to Los Angeles by about 80 miles. El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than it is to Texarkana. Texarkana is closer to Chicago than it is to El Paso.

Of course there is Point Roberts (Washington), a peninsula only accessible by land through British Columbia (due south of Tsawwassen in Delta/suburban Vancouver).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ap_cropped.JPGhttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Washington.JPG

And the Northwest Angle, an enclave of Minnesota in Lake of the Woods, but only accessible by land through Manitoba.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...WEST_Angle.png

all photos from Wikipedia

The distance from New York City to Iceland is about the same as from New York City to San Francisco.

Atlanta is farther west than Detroit.

The east coast is counterintuitive. The five major east coast cities listed in order of physical distance from Detroit: Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.

Despite Detroit and Boston being roughly the same latitude, Detroit and Washington are actually much closer to each other than Detroit and Boston. In fact, Detroit and Washington are nearly as close to each other as are Boston and Washington.

Ireland is the same size as West Virginia

South Korea is the same size as Indiana

North Korea is the same size as Pennsylvania

Syria is the same size as Washington

Afghanistan is the same size as Texas

Greece is the same size as Louisiana

Israel is the same size as New Jersey

Spain is the same size as California

Saudi Arabia is the same size as Alaska

Netherlands is the same size as Maryland

UK is the same size as Michigan

Italy is the same size as Arizona

Fort Montgomery, in the very northeast corner of New York, on Lake Champlain, was actually built in Canada, according to the original survey line. Construction of the unnamed first fort on that spot was halted when this was discovered. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 ceded the fort to the US, and the international border now bumps up slightly in the area to allow the fort to be in the United States.