[Talk-us] County borders vs. State borders

Greg Troxel gdt at ir.bbn.com
Tue Oct 18 12:36:41 BST 2011


Alexander Roalter <alexander at roalter.it> writes:

> 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?

Probably, but it comes down to looking up state law/etc. to find out
what is really true.

> 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

And, I would expect unincorporated areas, but these differences would
probably not appear to be mistakes.

> 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.

Again you have to go look up some reality from the government.  These
are legal things, so they are as they are defined by the authoritative
jurisdiction.  But I agree that if two existing border representations
are off by a small number of meters then it is very likely that they are
meant to be in the same place.

> 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

I as just wondering about this yesterday for Massachusetts and the
ocean.  It seems the TIGER county lines stop at the shoreline, but the
state line goes into the sea.  So it seems in the US that the ocean (and
apparently the Great Lakes but perhaps not other lakes) is in the US
(definitely), a state (very likely) and probably not in a county or
town.

> 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.

I would not expect the same rules in MN and Italy...
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