The Northwest Angle is a tiny area where the US/Canada border goes … uh ... a little bit squirrely.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
The map that caused all the trouble photo from WikiCommons
When the Revolutionary War came to an end in 1783, the newly-formed United Sates of America and the United Kingdom had to set a border between the now-independent colonies and the British possession of Canada. For the most part, it went smoothly. The agreed border ran along a series of rivers and lakes from the Atlantic coast at Maine to the Great Lakes.
And there, things got a little unclear.
The only map of the area in question which the negotiators had, had been drawn in 1755 by a Virginia botanist who had moved to London, named John Mitchell. Mitchell had never actually been in the area himself: he compiled his map largely from a collection of smaller regional maps that he had obtained from the British governors in the area, which included portions of the modern provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and the state of Minnesota.
In examining Mitchell’s map, the British and American negotiators in Paris decided that a small body of water known as “The Lake of the Woods” would make a convenient marker. Mitchell’s map depicted this as a small oval lake that lay just to the east of the source of the Mississippi River (which was the US western border at this time), and the two countries now agreed that the border would come from the east “through the Lake of the Woods to the northwesternmost point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the river Mississippi”.
In the aftermath of American independence, however, relations between the US and British Canada remained tense. Both sides built a series of forts along their border at the St Lawrence River, and there were military and political provocations that flew back and forth. In 1794, the “Jay Treaty” tried to resolve these issues, and one of the matters dealt with in the negotiations centered around the border. By this time, the area around Lake of the Woods had been reached by a number of adventurers and settlers, and it had become clear that the source of the Mississippi River lay a considerable distance to the south of the Lake. Hence, a line due west from its northwest corner would not intercept the River at all, and the border that had been specified in the 1783 Treaty could not exist in reality. As a result, in the Jay Treaty both sides agreed to begin “amicable negotiations” to find a workable border.
Instead, relations between the two countries worsened, resulting in the War of 1812, during which the US tried and failed to invade and annex the entire area of Canada.
In 1814, with the war stalemated, the US and Britain met again in Ghent to work out a peace treaty. As part of this, London suggested that the US/Canadian border be relocated from Lake of the Woods to Lake Itasca, which was the actual source of the Mississippi. But this location was further south, meaning that the US would be giving up an area of land—and national pride (as well as the general idea of ending the war without any territorial concessions from either side) demanded that the Americans keep every inch that had been given to it by the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The British proposal was rejected out of hand.
And there the matter rested until 1818. By this time, both British and American settlers had flooded into the area that is now Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and it was necessary to specify another border between what was Canadian and what was American. In the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, the two countries set the western border at the 49th Parallel, a line which would extend from the Pacific towards the Great Lakes and the border area around the Lake of the Woods. From that point, it was agreed, the new border would proceed due south until it reached the 49th Parallel.
But this area had still not been accurately surveyed or mapped, and it was not clear exactly where the “northwesternmost point” on the Lake of the Woods was. So in 1824 the British sent a team led by explorer and mapmaker David Thompson to examine the area, and he reported the unwelcome news that the lake was larger and more irregular than it appeared on the map, and there were at least four spots on its shore that may have been the “northwesternmost point”. That led to another expedition a year later, led by German astronomer turned surveyor Johann Tiarks, who decided that the area now known as Angle Inlet was the furthest northwest. The border was set as a line due south from there, and this was confirmed by a provision in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which also resolved a number of other border issues between the US and Canada.
But that caused a new problem. This new border would cut off a tiny peninsula that jutted out into the Lake of the Woods measuring about 120 square miles, which had been US territory ever since the 1783 Treaty of Paris, leaving it surrounded by Canada and cut off from the rest of the United States. The British made several proposals to correct this, all of which involved the US giving up, exchanging, or selling that bit of territory, but the Americans once again insisted that they would not alter any of the terms of the previous Treaties and would not give up any territory. The US counter-proposed that a narrow corridor be carved out of Canadian territory which would connect the enclave to the rest of Minnesota. This was rejected by Ottawa.
Northwest Angle photo from WikiCommons
As a result, the peninsula, today known as the “Northwest Angle”, remains cut off, a tiny little piece of the United States which is surrounded by water on one side and Canada on the other. The only way that the 120 or so American citizens who live here can enter or leave is by either crossing the Lake of the Woods by boat, by flying a private floatplane (there is no airport), or by leaving US territory by car, crossing a slice of Canada on a 75-mile roadway (some stretches of it are dirt or gravel), and then re-entering the United States.
About three-fourths of the land area in the Angle belongs to a band of Chippewa Native Americans as part of the Red Lake Indian Reservation—though Natives make up less than 1% of the population. There are no hospitals in the Angle, no grocery stores, no traffic lights, no high school (just a one-room elementary school), and virtually no jobs. The entire local economy is based on sport fishing and tourist resorts along the lake. Many of the residents make the cross-border trip twice a day through Canada to jobs in the mainland of Minnesota and back again.
In 1998, Canada changed its fishing laws to allow non-residents who were fishing in Canadian waters to keep a number of fish, but only if they were staying in a Canadian resort. This directly impacted guests at the American resorts in the Northwest Angle, who often fished in the Canadian portion of the Lake of the Woods. As a result, Minnesota’s state government retaliated with a hefty fee for Canadian railroad trains which crossed its territory, and went so far as to introduce a state bill authorizing the Angle’s residents to secede from the United States. The “Walleye War” ended with both sides adjusting their regulations.
However, the difficulties of living in an enclave were enough to entice the residents to send an online petition to the White House in January 2019 asking the US to sell the Angle to Canada. The petition was never acted upon.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)
