I am not sure which forum to put this in, so I will put it here. Do you think that drainage divides, the lines that separate two different river basins from one another, serve as good national and state borders? The US states of Montana and Idaho have some of their borders defined as drainage divides. In a timeline I am working on, the US annexes more of Mexico, but I have heard that the US wouldn't follow Mexico's already established state borders, so I was wondering if it would be a good idea to use drainage basins. Keep in mind, they are ideal for managing water resource and are usually defined by mountains, so the US-Mexico border would be a mountain range.
Do drainage basin divides make good national borders?
Before rise of railroads, drainage basins were generally economically united region, rivers served as roads, not as barriers.
So, would that make drainage basins a good idea? To make the united economic region it's own state instead of using lines of latitude?
Before railroads-yes, after railroads are build rivers' importance would be greatly reduced.
What about as a water resource rather than a method of transport? Apparently defining borders on drainage basins decreases the competition between states for irrigation. I would have thought that a place like North Mexico could benefit with not fighting over water, as it would already be scarce.
Generally... no. They're expensive to survey and prone to error. There's a reason they were so rarely used in the North American West.
They makes sense in theory, but in practicality when the people who are making the borders are drawing them, it's much easier to just use a parallel, mountain range or river.
They makes sense in theory, but in practicality when the people who are making the borders are drawing them, it's much easier to just use a parallel, mountain range or river.
They were used in the American West though, at least pre-statehood. For instance, pre-Civil War, the Nebraska Territory and Washington Territory used the Continental Divide as the border. Some counties in Colorado still use the Continental Divide as their borders. The Continental Divide has very apparent mountain ranges as well.
Depends on how marked they are geographically. I would say drainage basins separated by high mountain ridges make perfect borders, while if the watershed is just a minuscule line of hills barely discernible with the eye, it probably doesn't divide economic regions.
Firstly, you have to actually know where it is. It would be easier to just mark an arbitrary line on the map.
The continental divide is one of the most easily recognizable features in North America. Just because the watershed follows it doesn't mean they're using the watershed though.
If it made more sense to use them, they would have used them. I don't think you understand how difficult it was to survey a watershed with 19th century equipment.
What do you mean? In that case, it's still the Mississippi drainage basin. There's other reasons why for some reason they abandoned the original territorial borders (giving us the square-shaped states) when they carved new states out of them.
I never said it would be easy to use drainage basins given the technology of the day, which is too bad because they're fantastic borders which make sense both aesthetically and economically. This is why the US-Canada border is the 49th parallel, because it was deemed too expensive to survey the boundary between the Hudson Bay-Mississippi. But when you have one of the most obvious drainage basins in the world, it definitely doesn't make sense not to use it.
When you have borders that are basically arbitrary, like between counties or between US states this does not matter as much because the borders don't truly delineate between two distinct national polities. Between two separate countries, these could be reasonable. However except where an area has been accepted as terra nullis, borders come about based on all sorts of factors long before the concept of drainage basins comes about.
Drainage divides were used for County borders in California and used in Idaho and Montana. Also, how would a mountain range be used as a border? Wouldn't that just be a drainage basin or would approximate lines of latitude be used?
So, a mountain range like the Sierra Nevada for a border between California and Nevada?
Montana counties follow the Missouri River until the front range of the mountains, and then they use the ranges for separation. Idaho counties "generally" follow the relief of the land and rivers. If you superimpose a county map over a relief map you can see what the general idea is. California counties follow the relief of the mountains down towards the valley. The mountain range is easy to survey from, everything on either side of the hump is a unique entity.
I haven't seen a good argument for why the government spends a lot of extra money for a squiggly line when a man in Washington or London can a draw a straight one for less than 1/10 the cost .
In the modern era of GPS, satellite imagery and GIS mapping of course watersheds work wonderfully. But 150 years ago you had to physically outfit a crew, go into uncharted land and brave the elements, bandits, and natives and hope to God a random storm or early snow doesn't scrap your season early. To spend the extra time determining if the water from this set of hills went north or south was completely beyond the scope of what these guys could do until much further into the 19th century.
Yes. The entire Mississippi Basin should have been made a single state. It would have a population of 100 million, making it not only the only relevant flyover state, but the most relevant state in America.
There are a few county borders in California that were originally defined as ridges, then redefined as stair-stepping north-south and east-west segments that, while avoiding dividing survey units, merely approximated the drainage divide.
In many ways, the Rhine tells the history of Europe and of rivers.
Trade at the estuary, military frontier on the main body.
Trade at the estuary, military frontier on the main body.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
I talked about this in a thread a few months back where someone was discussing alternate state boundaries. In most cases, Western U.S. borders are pretty close to being drainage basins (i.e. California/Nevada) or they make a logical boundary even if they don't follow drainage basins perfectly (the Montana/Idaho border following the Bitterroots and not the Continental Divide).
That makes sense though. You use the straight line to simulate the watershed, which is infinitely more efficient than determining the exact location of the watershed.