Glen
Moderator
Settlement of the Old Northwest went marginally faster, but the earlier building of the transcontinental routes will do much to speed up Western development.
Settlement of the Old Northwest went marginally faster, but the earlier building of the transcontinental routes will do much to speed up Western development.
Glen
Moderator
In 1859, the Washington Territory made a successful bid for statehood. While the main US transcontinental railway had passed to the north of the fledgling state, it had not done so by all that much, plus the lands of the Washington Territory had benefited from being along the southern spur of the wagon trail to Oregon for decades beforehand, with settlers not always wishing to go all the way to the Pacific. Lastly, expatriot Southerners of various stripes had also come across the border to settle. Washington was also along the main routes for driving Southern Cattle across the border into the USA.
In the process of transforming from territory to state, however, some adjustments were made to the borders. The unweildy jughandle of land in the northwest of the territory was lopped off and ceded to the Colorado Territory west of the 102nd meridian (with the 102nd meridian up to the Southern Fork of the Republican River forming the western border of the state). Washington's northern border was modified slightly by starting with and following the Republican River, which runs very close to the 40th parallel, until it crosses south of said 40th parallel for the last time, then follows to 40th parallel to the border of Missouri, with Missouri's western border forming its eastern border. The southern border of the state of course was at 36-30, the international border with the Dominion of Southern America.
The new State of Washington and surrounding nations, states, and territories.
In the process of transforming from territory to state, however, some adjustments were made to the borders. The unweildy jughandle of land in the northwest of the territory was lopped off and ceded to the Colorado Territory west of the 102nd meridian (with the 102nd meridian up to the Southern Fork of the Republican River forming the western border of the state). Washington's northern border was modified slightly by starting with and following the Republican River, which runs very close to the 40th parallel, until it crosses south of said 40th parallel for the last time, then follows to 40th parallel to the border of Missouri, with Missouri's western border forming its eastern border. The southern border of the state of course was at 36-30, the international border with the Dominion of Southern America.
The new State of Washington and surrounding nations, states, and territories.
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Glen
Moderator
Well, I do try to make a sensible border, and if there's a significant river running roughly parallel to where a longitude/latitude border would be (and especially if it meanders back and forth over that border), then ITTL the powers that be will tend to use that as the border. This is actually not terribly different from what happened throughout the history of state formation IOTL, and in fact there's a few places where OTL has more riverine borders than TTL (California and Oregon, for example). Granted, some others have more (TTL's Mississippi & Minnesota for example). Overall, though, I don't think they're excessively different in this regard, just in mildly different places.
Glen
Moderator
My current best guess as to years of admission of states to the United States of America.
- Pennsylvania - 1787
- Delaware - 1787
- New Jersey - 1787
- Connecticut - 1788
- Massachusetts - 1788
- Maryland - 1788
- Virginia - 1788
- Quebec - 1788
- New Hampshire - 1788
- New York - 1788
- Nova Scotia - 1789
- Rhode Island - 1789
- Newfoundland - 1791
- Vermont - 1791
- Kentucky - 1792
- Ohio - 1803
- Ontario - 1809
- Wabash - 1814
- Maine - 1815
- Illinois - 1816
- Huron - 1820
- Michigan - 1830
- Missouri - 1836
- Mississippi - 1842
- Oregon - 1849
- California - 1849
- Minnesota - 1853
- Washington - 1859
Colorado territory still looks ridiculously long to be a state, but the portions west of OTL Colorado (OTL's southern Utah and Central Nevada) are some of the most economically useless in the country, with no major settlements aside from in the area around Saint George, where some level of agriculture was possible. Thus despite being absurdly long, it will probably stay as is.
Glen
Moderator
We shall see - I will note that there are still some future silver mines in the western part of the Colorado Territory.
Earl_of_Somerset
Banned
they should mess up the border a little bit, like they did IOTL.
Look on Google maps and the border of Colorado slants a little bit towards the monument
Look on Google maps and the border of Colorado slants a little bit towards the monument
Hrrm, you're right. I had always assumed the silver mining was all around the Reno/Carson City area, because of the number of ghost towns in the region. But the Comstock lode (which does seem to be in California ITTL) was only the first one to be discovered.
Still, it was hardly land which welcomed anything but mining. Maybe it becomes its own territory, but then later gets appended to something to the north, as it becomes clear it will never have a large enough population for statehood?
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Glen
Moderator
they should mess up the border a little bit, like they did IOTL.
Look on Google maps and the border of Colorado slants a little bit towards the monument
What can I say, TTL's USA has an outstanding surveyor's corps.
Why is there large states in the West?What can I say, TTL's USA has an outstanding surveyor's corps.
Glen
Moderator
colorado isn't rectangular
Well, rectanglish, yeah?
I personally object to irrational borders - if in fact rectanglular borders made sense, then they should be used - but too often they get in the way of natural boundaries.
Glen
Moderator
Are you talking about California and Oregon, or the territories?
California is actually, in many ways, more modest in size than OTL California. Oregon is big, true, but again not outrageously so compared to OTL California. It really doesn't make much sense IMO to subdivide the coastal Oregon territory as much as it was IOTL - here, due to the earlier statehood, they keep it larger so as to have a reasonable population size.
Glen
Moderator
Prior to the major Women's Suffrage campaigns of the 1840s and 1850s, the only state to allow the vote outside of school boards was New Jersey (a state where women had had the vote since 1797). Suffrage supporters in the Democratic party focused on gaining the vote state by state. Their campaign had started to bear fruit first in Mississippi, where women were granted the vote in 1850. Minnesota followed suite upon achieving statehood in 1853. However, these were their only two victories in two decades.
Suffrage champions in the Federalist party focused their efforts on the more long term, but wide reaching, goal of a constitutional amendment granting women the vote nationwide. The first real push for national women's suffrage was promulgated by native son of New Jersey, President Benjamin Hull Kays.
Earl_of_Somerset
Banned
They screwed up placing the Four corners monument, so instead of spending the money to move it they did this to the border.
