America's Strangest Borders: Exclaves, Wedges and Cut-Off Corners

Places the map forgot to tidy up.

Treaties drawn on bad maps, rivers that moved overnight and surveyors working with chains and compasses left the United States with a collection of geographic leftovers — towns you can only reach through Canada, a corner of Kentucky surrounded by Tennessee and Missouri, a legal no-man's-land in Yellowstone. These are the strangest.

#	Place	Why it's here
1	Point Roberts Point Roberts, Washington	Washington town reachable by land only through Canada
2	The Northwest Angle Angle Inlet, Minnesota	The only part of the lower 48 north of the 49th parallel
3	Kentucky Bend Fulton County, Kentucky	Kentucky exclave wrapped by Tennessee and the Mississippi
4	Carter Lake, Iowa Carter Lake, Iowa	An Iowa city stranded on the Nebraska side of the Missouri
5	Alburgh, Vermont Alburgh, Vermont	Vermont peninsula attached by land only to Quebec
6	Hyder, Alaska Hyder, Alaska	Alaska town that runs on Canadian time
7	Little Diomede Island Bering Strait, Alaska	Two and a half miles from Russia — and a day behind it
8	Yellowstone’s Zone of Death Idaho portion of Yellowstone National Park	A legal loophole in Idaho's slice of Yellowstone
9	The Delaware Wedge New Castle County, Delaware	A survey gap fought over until 1921
10	The Twelve-Mile Circle New Castle, Delaware	The only U.S. state border drawn as an arc
11	Ellis Island New York Harbor	Split between New York and New Jersey in 1998
12	Four Corners Four Corners Monument	The only point where four states meet
13	Navassa Island Caribbean Sea, west of Haiti	U.S. island claimed by Haiti

Place

Why it's here