[Talk-us] How are US county boundaries legally defined?

[Eric Ladner]

On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 8:48 AM Jake <jakewins at gmail.com> wrote:

> ...
> On every map I can find - Boone Countys GIS dept., census.gov, US Forest
> Service - the county border strictly follows a river, Cedar Creek. However,
> on OSM, the boundary is shaped exactly like the river, but is shifted about
> a quarter mile north-east of it. Here's a small section to show what I mean:
>
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/38.8117/-92.1427
>
> Now, I'm pretty sure this is a mistake - rivers move, but they don't shift
> in perfectly synchronized 40-mile segments like this.
>

Looks like the whole middle section got dragged as a bad edit or
something.  Data overlaid on USGS maps matches the surrounding area pretty
well, including the river.

If it were me, I'd just treat it as an error and correct it.  My guess is
you'll find that the GIS boundaries line up with the river (as does the
USGS map).

My 0.02.  Take it or leave it.

Eric
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