[Talk-us] County borders vs. State borders

[Alexander Roalter]

I recently started converting the Iowa and Minnesota county borders from 
simple ways to correct boundary relations, which means also removing the 
doubled ways the adjacent areas share.

So far, so good, but I encountered some questions:

Shouldn't county borders always coincide with state borders? In the case 
of the Minnesota/Iowa border, there were often differences up to 150 
meters. I then used the state borders as the 'better' solution and 
extended/capped the county lines. What would be the best way to do?

As far as I know, town borders/city limits not necessarily have to 
concide with county borders, as there are some towns that are part of 
two counties. But if only a few meters of the border lie in another 
county, I think one of the borders is misaligned. I didn't change 
anything about city boundaries yet, because I didn't know what would be 
the best way to go.

Lastly, I was wondering about the Minnesota north east border. Here, we 
have Cook County, but does Cook county extend all the way into Lake 
Superior to coincide with the state border, or does it stop at the shore 
line, and the lake area (up until the common border in the lake to 
Wisconsin) isn't associated with any county? Does someone know more 
about the situation there? I can only compare it with the areas in Italy 
I know of, where municipalities, provinces and regions all extend to the 
shore line (and the border is drawn as such), but the country border is 
12 km into the sea, as is international custom, which means the area 
isn't part of any province/region/municipality.


-- 
cheers,
Alex