What is the history of the US-Canada border?

 Allan:

Hoo boy. This is gonna be a long one.

Prior to 1781, it wasn’t really important where the border was because both the 13 colonies and the four other British colonies were all British.

However, after the American War of Independence, the peace treaty ceded the land south of the Great Lakes to the United States and a border was drawn between Quebec and New York, Vermont, New Hampshire at the 45th parallel. However this didn’t include the border with Maine (then part of Massachusetts) which was left fuzzy because the land was hardly inhabited.

That was fine until the United States bought Louisiana from the French. Technically, the line was at the divide of the watersheds of the Mississippi River and the Hudson Bay basin.

After the War of 1812, the British and Americans decided to straighten out the border along the 49th parallel of latitude, except for the Northwest Angle of the Lake of the Woods. Unfortunately, at the time, everyone thought the Mississippi went north of the 49th parallel because the agreement was that there would be a line from the Northwest Angle west to the Mississippi and then back down to the 49th. Except they found out that the Mississippi actually heads west north of Minneapolis. As such, the border goes from the Northwest Angle straight down, isolating the land.

In 1842, they fixed the border between Maine, Quebec and New Brunswick. That extends north up past the 45th parallel. That cut off Maine’s claim to a bit of the St. Lawrence River.

In 1848, the two nations largely settled their claims west of the Rocky Mountains. Britain had claimed the Washington-Oregon territory based on their exploration of the Columbia River. The U.S. claimed the territory based on their trading posts on the Pacific Coast, which were in place before the river was explored and claimed the territory on the Pacific Coast up to 54′40″ north latitude. However, it was clear Vancouver Island belonged to the British as it was already a colony by this time and had been explored by the British. The border was fixed between some of the islands in the straight between the mainland and Vancouver Island, and the land border was again extended along the 49th parallel.

Except the ownership of one island was in dispute and a war nearly started over it when an American killed a pig owned by a British officer. Instead, the parties went to arbitration and the island was awarded to the Americans. Also, Point Roberts was thought to be well above the 49th parallel, but it turned out a chunk of it was below the parallel. The British wrote to make a deal to take the whole point, but the Americans never replied and eventually they settled it even though it’s isolated from the rest of Washington State.

Finally, in 1902, the two nations settled the Alaska border. The border was favourable to the Americans as it took all the river ports north of Prince Rupert.

Steven Haddock