Longtime reader James S.[1] has an interesting experience every time he drives along Interstate 75 between Georgia and Florida. There is a spot along that highway where one can observe two county entrance markers simultaneously.
Take a close look at the Google Street View image and the signs can be seen as blurry white lettering on a green background, one nearby and one on the horizon.
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Someone traveling north on I-75 heading towards Macon will leave Peach County, cross into Crawford County, and somewhere between 770-800 feet later cross into Bibb County. James wanted to know if there were other places where one could see two “entering” signs simultaneously.
I love the way they managed to post that billboard within the narrow band, too. Crawford successfully attained a little tax revenue from their tiny chunk of Interstate Highway.
Seriously, is there any reason that little neck of Crawford actually needs to exist? It doesn’t seem to serve any purpose, yet Georgia has an overdose of small, misshapen counties like this one. I experienced a similar situation on I-20 earlier this year when I clipped Walton County, Georgia. That was nowhere near as remarkable as James’ accomplishment however, as my trip through Walton lasted closer to 7,800 feet.
Let me pause momentarily for a small rant. I don’t like how the new Mapquest handles embedded maps, the only viable option when I wish to feature a geo-oddity involving county lines. These are the steps: first one has to specify a location rather than perform a simple drill-down task; then hunt for the option hidden behind the “Send To” button and the “Your Website” tab. Mapquest will finally generate a code but it doesn’t provide any preview or customization function. I had to drop it into my website, make a best guess and then adjust the code from within my blog by hand. That’s unbelievably inconvenient and unresponsive.
Plus, embedded Mapquest images don’t appear in Google Reader. If you don’t see bunch of maps and you want to understand what I’m talking about, you’ll need to leave Reader and come to the website.
But let’s get back on track and consider James’ question. I turned to the excellent Mob Rule website that caters to the County Counter community. The site provides a page called "Difficult Questions" that attempts to determine whether certain major roads touch specific counties or not. There I found some really interesting situations.
Drivers heading northbound on U.S. Route 19 through Fanning Springs, Florida will enter Gilchrist County, but drivers heading south will not. The county border splits this mile-long road segment down the middle.
Do travelers on Interstate 294 outside of Chicago, Illinois enter DuPage County? No, they don’t. However, those heading southbound on I-294 who then exit eastbound onto I-290 will clip DuPage County for maybe five hundred feet.
There is a stretch of Interstate 80 in Nevada that rivals the Georgia example but falls just a bit short. Heading east, travelers go from Washoe, to Storey, to Lyon county in a distance of about a half-mile.
West Virginia has a section of Interstate 79 that cuts a corner of Gilmer County for less than a hundred feet. Just to the west, however, there’s another section of Gilmer that one enters for several hundred feet.
There are plenty of other examples on the Mob Rule page and I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t check them all. If I’d had time to do that, then perhaps I’d have seen better examples than the one James discovered during his travels. With that admission, I don’t know of other instances on Interstate Highways or major (two digit) U.S. Highways with shorter distances between three counties. Sure, I bet we could find some back-country road, but a highway?
How about it, folks? Is James onto something? Are there equally remarkable instances (other than the one in Washington, DC)? What about international examples?
Thanks again for the tip, James.
[1]James is working on a new website. He says it’s still under development so I plan to bookmark it and examine it again later.
I love it when categories collide and take me in entirely unanticipated directions. That’s what happened today. I noticed an interesting external search that bounced against my site: "What 2 state capitals are within 20 miles of a time zone boundary?" I’ve featured time zones many different times. I’ve also focused on the peculiarities of states. However I’ve never linked the two together so I decided to investigate this query further.
This should be pretty straightforward, I thought. Mapquest displays time zone markers and Google Maps provides a Great Circle distance utility. It shouldn’t take much effort to find the answers by toggling between the two.
Pierre, the capital city of South Dakota is the obvious initial choice that jumps right off the screen. This can be seen easily on Mapquest.
Notice how the yellow time zone line cuts straight through South Dakota. Pierre falls in Central Time, but a bridge over the Missouri River is all that separates it from Western Time. Perhaps the town on the western bank, Ft. Pierre follows Central Time informally (don’t know that for a fact but such affinity recognition is fairly common). Even it that’s the case it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Pierre doesn’t falls within 20 miles of a time zone boundary both formally and informally.
By the way, this is the first time I’ve noticed the "embed" option on Mapquest. This must be a feature that came with its new interface a few months ago. Nice. I’ll have to file that away for future reference.
The second state capital is a bit more problematic. I think it’s supposed to be a trick question with the answer being Juneau, Alaska. People tend to overlook Alaska and Hawaii on these types of trivia questions so they are an obvious choice for early consideration. [UPDATE: it does indeed seem to be Juneau. See the comment provided by a knowledgeable reader below]
Again, focus on the yellow time zone indicator. In this case it happens to follow an international border, separating Juneau in the Alaskan Time Zone from British Columbia and Yukon in Canada, both following Pacific Time. There’s only one problem though: the distance is about 35 miles.
Maybe the person looking for the information got the question wrong? Perhaps that’s the case, but then consider that Bismarck, North Dakota is about the same distance from a time zone boundary or maybe even a little bit closer (about 32 miles – hard to tell). I never realized it before but there are a other state capital cities located fairly close to time zone boundaries too including Tallahassee, Florida at about 42 miles and Atlanta, Georgia at about 57 miles.
Pierre, SD is a no-brainer. The second part of the answer is either Juneau, AK, or Bismarck, ND or perhaps some other state capital that I’ve overlooked. Nonetheless it was a fun exercise and I hope our searcher finds his or her answer.
I mentioned at the beginning that Google Maps has a utility that provides Great Circle "as the crow flies" distances between two points. It’s a useful tool, and in case you haven’t seen it before you can find it easily enough from their front page by following these links in succession:
- My Maps
- Featured Content
- Distance Measurement Tool
I guess I’ve been feeling a little more curious than usual lately and I happened to spot the "I’m feeling geeky" option. Well, I’m often feeling geeky so I gave it a shot. There are a whole lot of units of measurement available that one can use to describe the distance from Juneau, AK to the Canadian border, whether useful, sublime, obsolete, or bizarre. 1145.28 Olympic Swimming Pool lengths, anyone?
- 35.5823 English Miles
- 57.2641 Kilometers
- 521.874 American Football Fields
- 1.62957e+8 American Printer’s Points
- 5.72641e+14 Ångströms
- 106001 Black Cubits
- 3.82787e-7 Astronomical Units
- 115423 Cubits of Lagash
- 128251 Babylonian trade Cubits
- 68318.0 California Varas
- 36455.4 Canas
- 1.52310e+8 Didot Points
- 109307 Egyptian Old Royal Cubits
- 127525 Egyptian Old Trade Cubits
- 154584 Egyptian Remen
- 108209 Egyptian Royal Cubits
- 31312.4 Fathoms
- 187875 Feet
- 284.658 Furlongs
- 123654 Greek Kyrenaika Cubits
- 120769 Greek Metrikos Cubits
- 103056 Ammatu Rabitu
- 2846.58 Gunter’s Chains
- 284658 Gunter’s Links
- 88060.6 Hashimi Cubits
- 2.25449e+6 Inches
- 133763 Jewish 1st Temple Cubits
- 128828 Jewish 2nd Temple Cubits
- 130860 Jewish 2nd Temple Sacred Cubits
- 10.3067 Leagues
- 114.528 Li
- 6.05283e-12 Light Years
- 57264.1 Meters
- 107350 Mesopotamian Nil-Cubits
- 30.9202 Nautical Miles
- 1145.28 Olympic Swimming Pools
- 1.85580e-12 Parsecs
- 109933 Pergamon cubits
- 114507 Persian Cubits
- 3.54304e+39 Planck Lengths
- 2.53006e+7 Potrzebies
- 1878.75 Ramsden’s Chains
- 11386.3 Rods
- 128820 Roman Cubits
- 38692.0 Roman Double-Paces
- 53.6784 Russian Verst
- 118314 Salamis Cubits
- 33645.2 Smoots
- 68506.0 Spanish Varas
- 110417 Sumarian Nippur cubits
- 67634.8 Texas Varas
- 2126.14 Vara chains
- 62624.8 Yards
