The Northwest Angle

Look closely at a map of Minnesota and you will spot a small chimney poking up into Canada. That is the Northwest Angle, a stretch of forest, bog and islands on Lake of the Woods that is the only place in the contiguous United States north of the 49th parallel. It exists because the diplomats who wrote the 1783 Treaty of Paris relied on the Mitchell Map, which misplaced both the lake and the source of the Mississippi. The boundary they described made no geographic sense, and later surveys and treaties settled it with this odd notch.

The Angle can be reached by land only through Manitoba, or by boat or winter ice road across the lake. Its 149 residents (2020 census) live mostly around Angle Inlet, and drivers entering from Canada report to U.S. customs by video kiosk at an unstaffed crossing. The Angle also holds the northernmost point of the lower 48, near 49.38 degrees north, though most visitors come for the walleye fishing.

• Minnesota
  The Land of 10,000 Lakes, headwaters of the Mississippi located in
• Point Barrow
  The northernmost point of the United States related
• Point Roberts
  A Washington town reachable by land only through Canada related
• Red Lake Nation
  The closed reservation around Minnesota’s largest lake related