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What are some geographic facts that you find odd, unexpected, or just plain interesting? Here are some of mine:
1. Cairo, IL is closer to Birmingham, AL than it is to Chicago, and equidistant from Little Rock, AR as it is from Indianapolis.
2. Amarillo, TX is closer to Denver than it is to Austin, and closer to Cheyenne, WY than it is to Houston.
3. El Paso, TX is closer to San Diego than it is to Houston.
4. Across the southern United States, everything from Pecos, TX to Dothan, AL is located in the Central Time Zone.
5. Though South Carolina barely has any mountains, its highest point is higher than the highest point in Pennsylvania.
6. From its westernmost point to its easternmost point, North Carolina is over 500 miles long.
7. The Las Vegas metropolitan area is only served by one Interstate, not counting local spur routes. The Austin metropolitan area is only served by one Interstate, period.
8. New York and Philadelphia have no direct Interstate connection (yet).
9. The distance between the summit of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, and Badwater Basin in Death Valley, the lowest point in North America, is only 86 miles.
10. The northern border of Missouri is located at roughly the same latitude as Pittsburgh, while the southern border of the Missouri bootheel is located at roughly the same latitude as Raleigh, NC.
What are some geographic oddities that you can think of? List them here.
Gnutella, I have to thank you personally for offering us geography buffs the opportunity to take this topic and run with it. Truth is, this is the main reason I log on to City-Data each day!
According to Boardreader.com, here are the most frequent contributors to "Oddities of Geography" to date:
Thanks for starting the thread. It is the thread that got me hooked on C-D and the first one I check.
Can't count the number of times I've check this thread then had to get the atlas out.
And thanks also to all the big posters for keeping it interesting.
Bicycles, snowmobiles, emergency vehicle, and horse-drawn. Designated as a state highway in 1933, but no explanation of why it was given such a designation, although one might surmise that state highway designation enabled state road-use taxes to be applied to its maintenance, as well as federal funding.
Isle Royale is a Great Lakes island in Lake Superior and is part of Michigan. It's the largest island in Lake Superior and the 3rd largest in the contiguous US after Long Island & Padre Island. Isle Royale has no population and despite being only 15 miles from the shores of Minnesota & Ontario, it's part of Michigan (56 miles).
Cockburn Island, Ontario, no longer has a permanent population, but several hundred people maintain summer homes there, and there was a ferry until the 1960s. It is just a few minutes, less than a mile, by snowmobile in winter to Drummond Island, Michigan. But by car in summer, that trip is over 350 miles.
Gnutella, I have to thank you personally for offering us geography buffs the opportunity to take this topic and run with it. Truth is, this is the main reason I log on to City-Data each day!
According to Boardreader.com, here are the most frequent contributors to "Oddities of Geography" to date:
Kansas is the only state in the lower 48 in which no native species of Pine tree grows. The Red Cedar is the only coniferous tree native to Kansas. (Hawaii has no native Pine, either.)
There is a geographical oddity that I've seen posted a couple places on the internet that seems to make no sense and be blatantly false to me. It claims that every lake in the state of Ohio is man-made and that there are no natural lakes there. How on earth do they not take Lake Erie into account when they make this claim?
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