Minnesota’s Northwest Angle Explained (with music) (duplicated)

Minnesota has one of the strangest borders in the United States — a tiny piece that sticks

above Canada. This odd shape is called the Northwest Angle, and it exists because

of a mistake made over 200 years ago. In the late 1700s, mapmakers believed the Mississippi

River flowed far north, almost to Canada. They were wrong. But treaties were

written using those incorrect maps anyway. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 said the U.S.-Canada border

would pass through the “northwesternmost point” of the Lake of the Woods. When accurate surveys

were finally done, officials realized that point forced the border to kink upward — creating

a U.S. island of land above Canada. Today, the Northwest Angle