Borders of the United States

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

The U.S. political borders can be classified into international and internal. An international boundary delineates the space between sovereign nations. Internal boundaries are more bureaucratic and used to break up space into manageable parts of administration.

International border states of the US

The U.S. shares international land borders with Canada and Mexico and sea borders with Bahamas and Cuba.

Below is the map showing the nearest country border to everywhere in the United States.

The United States – Canada border is the longest international border in the world between two countries. The terrestrial boundary (including portions of maritime boundaries in the Great Lakes and on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic coasts) is 8,891 kilometers (5,525 mi) long, of which 2,475 kilometers (1,538 mi) is Canada’s border with Alaska.

The US-Canadian Border Overlaid on Europe

The total length of the United States – Mexico border is 3,145 kilometers (1,954 miles).

The US-Mexican Border Overlaid on Europe

US internal borders

The United States is a country of 50 states, each with its own unique boundaries and history.

Reddit User Peter Gorman chopped up 50 U.S. states and turned them into Tetris-esque blocks to make it easier to understand how states neighbor one another.

Alaska and Hawaii naturally turn out to be a solitary yellow block, U.S. states towards the shoreline, like California, Florida, Maine, South Carolina, and Washington, have two or fewer neighboring states, while those at the opposing end of the spectrum, like Missouri and Tennessee, have 8t neighbors each, in almost every direction.

Modern state boundaries

Within the U.S., there are fifty states, each of which has its borders. Many people wonder why the boundaries between some states are drawn with geometric rigor.

Generally, 6 of the most significant influences managed the states’ shapes: natural geographic barriers; the American Revolution, longitude and latitude lines; the construction of railroads and Erie Canal, and the political disagreements over the problem of slavery.

If simplified, there are two types of internal U.S. borders: natural (rivers, mountains) and man-defined.

When the boundary is natural, such as a big river, it is a pretty clear separation of a landmass. Like rivers, mountains serve as barriers dividing peoples and their political and economic interests.

But in the United States, relief and rivers and political interests, religion, and languages have not strongly influenced the creation of borders as in Europe.

Below is a map of the United States if all borders between states were drawn along rivers or mountains like in Europe.

Europeanised America: US States with natural geographic borders

When we make the boundaries ourselves, the easiest line to draw is a straight one.

The first European understanding of North America was undifferentiated, endless space, which allowed for the imposition of coolly human-centered boundaries drawn with a geometric rigor. People who drew them wanted to get it done quickly. It is clearly seen if we take the borders of the western states, which came into being long after the eastern.

Typically, very straight U.S. boundaries mean that it’s in the middle of nowhere, or it was when drawn. No one worried enough to argue about it, and so an easy straight line was made. Congress just used longitude and latitude lines to create western states.

An ideal map of the United States could look like this.

Map of the U.S. if all state borders were straight lines