Political boundaries usually follow rivers or other natural boundaries but it always looks as if America was divided up by someone using a ruler.
A Google search reveals that it is only Hawaii that doesn't have at least one straight border and the ones in the middle are all almost rectangular.
I guess that in places without natural features to mark a border, it is easier to have the states with nice, even lines but it seems strange most of the states that were created pre-revolution and created by European settlers were mostly the standard wiggly border shape but the vast majority of states created by post-revolution 'Americans' are box shaped with a lot of straight lines.
I don't know of there is a deeper psychological reason for it but i notice it all the time now. Does look very neat and tidy though.
3 comments:
one factor was land ownership. back in the day some pioneers owned hundreds and even thousands of square miles in the west. some boundaries (Texas panhandle) were drawn along ranch boundaries...
also a lot the western u.s. does lack things like rivers to create boundaries.
finally consider that texas has some counties bigger than may european nations without expanding to the nearest natural boundary...
q
Canada and australia are even more lined. It seem Europe likes its empires in cubes.
The Aussies surprise me, they must have found the one person in the country sober enough to draw a straight line that day.
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