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Making a quick count, I have found 15 counties that form a "land bridge" between two states that that do not touch each other. For example Rockingham County, New Hampshire, touches both Maine and Massachusetts. Can you find them all? Are there more than 15?
The three counties of the OK panhandle (Cimarron, Texas and Beaver Counties, OK) form a bridge between Texas and Kansas. Cimarron is the furthest west of these, serves triple duty as it is a bridge between NM and KS and TX and CO as well.
Washington and Frederick Counties in Maryland bridges Pennsylvania and Virginia
Worcester County, Maryland bridges Virginia and Delaware
The three Delaware Counties could be considered a bridge between Maryland and New Jersey, but since you can only cross the Delaware River/Bay from Newcastle County, DE into NJ, will only count that as one.
Boundary and Bonner counties in Idaho bridge Washington and Montana while Idaho County, Idaho bridges Oregon and Montana
Click "scoreboard" and then click any user in the left column, to see a full USA county map. You might have to click once on the map to blow it up for more detail.
I just found two more, so there should be at least 17, counting only one in Delaware.
Mohave County, Arizona bridges California and Utah.
Baca County, Colorado bridges New Mexico and Kansas.
Berkshire County, Massachusettes bridges Connecticut and Vermont while Worcester County, Mass serves double duty as a bridge from New Hampshire to both Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Clark County, Nevada bridges California and Utah. I have found an interesting line that is hard to distinguish, but it looks like the dividing line between Elko and Humboldt counties lines up directly with the state line between Idaho and Oregon. This would form a four corners area between four counties in three states. It is hard to see if it is a perferct four corners from my map. If it is, then Elko county would be a bridge between Utah and Oregon, if you consider touching at diagonal corners as having a border.
Coos County, New Hampshire bridges Vermont and Maine.
Union County, New Mexico bridges Texas and Colorado.
Westchester County, New York bridges New Jersey and Connecticut.
This puts my total at 18 (19 if you count Humboldt couty) not including your original Rockingham County, NH.
Clark County NV falls way short (maybe 5 miles) of touching Utah. Humboldt NV falls about 1/2 mile short of touching Oregon. (Zoom in on MapQuest). I missed Union NM, that should make a total of 18 between us, including the example.
Mapquest is quite fascinating for things like this. If you zoom in and click "aerial view" you can see that there is a fairly decent dirt road along the north boundary of Nevada. Also a poorer dirt track along the ID/OR line, deviating around topography, but no discernable surface feature nor land-use difference between Elko and Humboldt counties, a half-mile to the east.
Clark County NV falls way short (maybe 5 miles) of touching Utah. Humboldt NV falls about 1/2 mile short of touching Oregon. (Zoom in on MapQuest). I missed Union NM, that should make a total of 18 between us, including the example.
Mapquest is quite fascinating for things like this. If you zoom in and click "aerial view" you can see that there is a fairly decent dirt road along the north boundary of Nevada. Also a poorer dirt track along the ID/OR line, deviating around topography, but no discernable surface feature nor land-use difference between Elko and Humboldt counties, a half-mile to the east.
I found a web sight that listed each state and its counties by name but did not list the neighboring state. Clark is the only one that I did not check against my road atlas, it just looked huge enough that I did not double check. Now I see clearly that it doesn't get to Utah. Carter County in Montana is closer to bridging Wyoming and North Dakota, falling less than 5 miles of the ND border.
Even the road atlas looked as if the county line of Elko and Humboldt and the state line of Oregon and Idaho was off just the tiniest fraction, was just hoping. It looks like this little bit of an overlap does occur with Cimmaron, OK and allows it to be a bridge between New Mexico and Kansas.
Sould we get to count Cimarron three times and Worcester, Mass two times in our list?
One more occurred to me. What two state capitals names are also non-capitalized stand-alone words in English that would be valid Scrabble entries?
Concord and Providence?
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