The border between the United States and Mexico has been a frequent topic of conversation and the news this summer. The Twelve Mile Circle doesn’t focus on political issues explicitly but it does have an interest in situations created by geography such as the recent border pirate phenomenon. In fact it was that situation that led me to the current topic, although indirectly.
Source: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL)
I noticed something unusual as I examined the international border between Laredo, Texas, USA and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, México. There is a notch, a little chunk of the Mexican state of Nuevo León inserting itself along the international border wedged between Tamaulipas and Coahuila. The little neck is only about 15 kilometres (9 miles) wide and not much longer. However, that’s sufficient to qualify Nuevo León as one of only ten "border states" found on either side of the line, as legitimately as Texas and its 1,997 km (1,241 mi) stretch.
It’s much easier to see the notch as one drills-down within an interactive map to capture it in more detail. Follow the international border northwest out of Nuevo Laredo and it practically jumps from the image. This would be an easy pickup of three Mexican states right in a row for those who collect those types of things. Additionally, Tamaulipas and Coahuila would be neighboring states if it wasn’t for the odd Nuevo León hernia interfering with their placement.
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Take an even closer look at the protrusion and notice an unusual pattern of roads. The small town of Colombia appears to be platted on a typical grid but the infrastructure southeast of it looks odd. That’s because its a staging area for international trade between the United States and Mexico, more suited to warehouse space and tractor-trailers than to residential neighborhoods. Nuevo León is a highly-industrialized powerhouse of the Mexican economy with per capita GDP and income nearly double the national average. They use their little border nub as a means to move products onto the international market.
Amazingly this didn’t happen until the early 1990′s with the construction of the Colombia-Solidarity International Bridge. Nuevo León watched idly as other border states cashed-in for years. Adjacent Tamaulipas positioned Nuevo Laredo as the most important border crossing in Latin America, and the city thrived as a result. Finally Nuevo León got its bridge across to the United States and created infrastructure around the town of Colombia to capture some of that cross-border trade.
I don’t have a complete answer on how Nuevo León obtained its border notch or how neighboring Tamaulipas got its odd northwestern tentacle along the river. However, I think I might have at least a partial answer or perhaps an educated guess. I consulted the website of the ever-helpful Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection of the University of Texas at Austin. Deep down on one of its menus lists I found a map of Mexican political divisions in 1824, created from historical sources in 1972. Assuming it’s an accurate representation, then it would follow that Nuevo León has had its river notch for close to two centuries (at least). Tamaulipas got its odd appendage because the northern third of its 1824 footprint — everything north of the Rio Grande — is now part of Texas.
That doesn’t answer why Nuevo León has river access. It merely points out that it’s been that way for a long time and predates the international border. It’s an arid area with very little rainfall so maybe the notch existed as a pathway to water. I’m speculating but I don’t know. Perhaps someone in the Twelve Mile Circle audience has greater familiarity with this topic and can use the comments section as an educational opportunity.
I’d always thought of piracy as a 17th Century anachronism until a couple of years ago with the deteriorating situation off the coast of Somalia. Even then I considered it a distant condition borne of a failed state two oceans away. Recent reports of North American pirates have simply bewildered me. I thought in the Americas they’d long ago been confined to family outings at Disney World, a la "Pirates of the Caribbean."
I won’t spend too much time describing the Mexican river pirates currently stalking the Rio Grande / Río Bravo del Norte along the Falcon Reservoir border area. It’s all been reported widely in the Press and there’s no need for me to go into great detail. To boil it down in a few words, smuggling activities by members of the Los Zetas drug cartel have been hampered by rival gangs and increased law enforcement. They’ve discovered a new source of revenue, the U.S. anglers straying across border waters in expensive boats loaded with sophisticated electronics. Easy pickings.
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The Falcon Reservoir traces back to a cooperative effort between Mexico and the United States. It is managed by the International Boundary and Water Commission for the benefit of both countries. Water is a scarce and valuable resource in this desert climate and a giant reservoir certainly contributes to the thirsty needs on both sides of the border, providing drinking water, irrigation, hydroelectric power, flood control and recreational space.
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The two nations plugged up the river in 1953 with the Falcon Dam, creating a large reservoir that stretches for miles. It has since become a magnet for boaters and fishermen. Texas Parks and Wildlife notes, "Falcon has long been regarded as one of the best largemouth bass lakes in the state. To win a bass tournament at Falcon, it often takes a 5-6 pound average/fish for your stringer. Channel catfish provide additional opportunities, with an occasional blue or flathead catfish."
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848 and established the Rio Grande as a border through this stretch, "from thence up the middle of that river, following the deepest channel, where it has more than one, to the point where it strikes the southern boundary of New Mexico." Most of the time it’s pretty academic. It’s shallow and narrow. You’re either on one side of the river or the other, as I discovered when I jumped the border a number of years ago. Deepest channel? Who cares. The rivulet is the border.
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Throw a lake on top of it however and things change considerably. The international boundary continues to be the deepest channel as it existed in 1848 but now obscured by more than 80,000 acres submerged below the surface. The Commission placed concrete pillars in the lake at the border turns, one of which can be seen in the satellite image (enhanced greatly by the shadow it casts).
The line doesn’t always stay near the middle of the lake either due to underlying topography. It comes perilously close to the U.S. shoreline in some spots, and as close as 500 feet from the banks near Zapata, the major Texas town in the area. However, U.S. border control agents can only stand by helplessly if a fisherman strays across that invisible line and falls into the clutches of pirates.
I encountered a number of interesting situations as I pulled together my recent series of borderlocking articles. One of those revelations pertained to Jeff Davis County(1) in the State of Texas. Examine its layout closely and notice that it intersects with neighboring Mexico but only at a single point along the Rio Grande River at its western extreme. I searched the maps to determine if this situation was replicated elsewhere in the United States but I could not find a single additional instance. I believe this may be the only example in the United States where a county contains a single-point international boundary.
This county outline map from Mapquest demonstrates the general situation. Jeff Davis County forms roughly a diamond shape turned on its side, anchoring the remainder of sparsely populated counties of farthest West Texas. Jeff Davis’ gain is Culberson County’s loss. Culberson is Jeff Davis’ northern neighbor. It fails to reach the Mexican border by only a few miles due to the triangular layout of Jeff Davis, Hudspeth and Presido Counties at this remote intersection.
Mapquest allows viewers to drill-down even further to create this extreme closeup. One wonders what must be so vital at this point along the Mexican border to justify an extension of Jeff Davis county all the way to the waters of the Rio Grande.
I’ve driven through Jeff Davis County before, traveling between Big Bend National Park and Carlsbad Caverns quite a few years ago. It’s desolate and empty, magnificent and beautiful in a haunting way. These were county lines drawn in a back room through the give-and-take of negotiation and not from the realism of underlying topography, of that I feel nearly certain. Long, straight lines make sense out here where few people live even today. It’s easier to fix a point on a recognizable topographic feature, a river in this instance, and I doubt there’s any more significance to it than that. I’m sure that went through the founders’ minds when the county was formed in 1871 and I couldn’t find any evidence to the contrary.
Google Earth demonstrated another fascinating feature. I grabbed this screen image from Google Earth with the 3D toggle activated and with sufficient tilt to activate the underlying topography. This view faces nearly due East, flying in from the Mexican state of Chihuahua (not to be confused with the dog of the same name), heading directly towards Texas. The yellow line represents the Rio Grande, the border between Mexico and the United States. Notice the pale green lines descending from the upper-left and upper-right corners and converging at the Rio Grand. Those are county lines. Thus, Mexico is the foreground, Hudspeth County is the left triangle, Jeff Davis is the middle triangle and Presidio is the right triangle.
It would be difficult to travel directly to the shared border between Jeff Davis County and Mexico without leaving Jeff Davis. Notice the large escarpment that stands within its path. I consulted a U.S. Geological Survey topographic map. The elevation changes from 3,800 feet to 3,236 feet over a short distance. The bluff drops nearly 600 vertical feet almost instantaneously.
It might be feasible to approach the point from either of the adjoining counties. Poke around any of the satellite images and one will find a number of farm roads leading towards the river a mile-or-two removed from either side of the point, allowing one to circumvent the escarpment at least theoretically. It’s not clear to me from the images, however, whether it would be possible to hike along the banks of the Rio Grande on the U.S. side of the border all the way to the appointed spot or not.
Using a boat would be considered a border incursion. At the very least it would require a passport and possibly a lot of explaining to officials on both side of the line should an aerial patrols spot our intrepid waypointer in transit. I can just imagine someone trying this explanation with a representative of the US Customs and Border Protection agency: "Seriously, I’m trying to reach the only location in the United States where a country intersects with an international border at a single point." Somehow I don’t see that one going over very well. That’s nothing compared to what would happen if someone ran into a smuggler in these remote hills, which is probably the more likely and terrifying scenario. I can’t imagine that ending well.
Nonetheless, if you’re feeling adventurous and want to be the Indiana Jones of odd-geography, go ahead and set your GPS for 30.629097, -104.979983 and give it a go.
(1) Yes, it’s named after that Jeff Davis, a.k.a., Jefferson Davis, the only President of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865. I mention that in consideration of the tone-deaf governor of my beloved Commonwealth of Virginia who declared April 2010 to be "Confederate History Month."
