Poll of the Day > What's the deal with that tiny widget of northern idaho that touches the border?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's kinda neat

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Isn't that where all the militias are, like where Ruby Ridge went down?

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You should read How the States Got Their Shapes. It's an interesting book, and it answers your question. Also, they made a TV show out of it.

http://www.amazon.com/How-States-Got-Their-Shapes/dp/0061431397

A lot of the stranger aspects of state shapes (especially the western ones) boils down to a lot of weird politics back in the day while they were being formed. Idaho's one of those places that wound up looking really odd because Wyoming and Montana stole pieces of what was supposed to be Idaho. And the top looks the way it does almost entirely because Montana deliberately fucked Idaho over for petty political reasons.

Idaho was originally supposed to be wider at the top (about as wide across as it is at the bottom, which would have left Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana all roughly rectangular), and then later with the border on the continental divide (because mountains):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorthAmerica-WaterDivides.png

...so it still would have looked weird (with a bite taken out of the side), but it still would have been larger, and more naturally shaped to existing geographical barriers. But the negotiator who was helping Montana establish its future borders was a personal friend of Lincoln and had a grudge against Idaho, so he bribed his way into getting Congress to fuck them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Edgerton
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Idaho barely exists. It's like the Delaware of the West. North Dakota doesn't exist at all.