I have made several maps for an alternate USA I designing. Arizona keeps the Clark County area. With out the Vegas area Nevada reaching a population threshold is unlikely. I was wanting to give some of the defunct Nevada territory to each of it neighbors. (California has been split north south with the line just south of the bay area) All attempts to draw boarders dividing Nevada looks really stupid. So how could I divide it between Utah, Idaho, 2 Californias and Oregon without it looking stupid? thanks
what should I do with Nevada
- Thread starter 606jae
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You seem to be forgetting that the US is a country with not one, but two states which are literally rectangles (and a couple more that are pretty close, looking at you New Mexico). And that's not even mentioning all the panhandles that exist for pretty much arbitrary reasons (Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, Maryland, West Virginia, etc.). Stupid is not at all out of the question
Deleted member 114175
OTL, Nevada was admitted without Clark County and didn't get it until three years later in 1867. Although there was talk of disestablishing Nevada in the late 19th century (when its population plunged from 62,000 in 1880 to 42,000 in 1900), this predates Vegas's founding in 1905 and its establishment as a gambling mecca in the '50s. Clark County didn't account for even 10% of the state's population until 1940. Sans Vegas, Nevada will be less populous, but there will still be more than enough people to keep it a state, even assuming Reno doesn't grow larger by usurping the mantle of its would-have-been southern competitor.
Assuming Nevada never gets Clark County and the decision is made to disestablish it as a state, however, I reckon you'd get something like this, with California owning the blue portion, Utah getting the pinkish portion, and Arizona retaining the orange bit, albeit (since you asked for pretty borders) ceding a little to California so that its eastern border is a nice straight line.
Nevada only became a seperate territory because of population growth in and around Virginia City, which is already close to the present day California border. If the eastern border of California had been arbitrarily defined as the 119th meridian rather than the 120th (either initially or as a response to VC’s population growth in the 1850’s) the rest of the state would likely still be Utah.
Saying that the state borders were drawn because of stupidity is pretty ignorant. Just because the borders are not aesthetically pleasing doesn't mean they're stupid.
Texas: had to surrender all territory north of 36°30" to comply with Missouri Compromise. To alleviate debt, Texas also sold a parcel of land to the west to divide the New Mexico Territory into nearly 12 equal lines of longitude, so that the future states in that territory would have roughly equal representation in Congress (ideally).
Oklahoma: northern border set at 37° to give Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas 3° height each (again, ideally for equal representation)
Utah: northeast corner given to Wyoming because it is separated from the rest of Utah by the Uinta Mountains
Maryland: partly because the original charter did not consider that Philadelphia was on the 40° line (so blame the King for that), partly because there were nearby colonies owned by the Dutch (who, upon being conquered by the English, did not want to be attached to a Catholic Colony
West Virginia: already had lucrative settlements along the Ohio river when its border with Pennsylvania was negotiated.
Straight lines are not stupid. They are easy to survey and prevent unnecessary border disputes, and they were created in order to parcel out American territory to states that would be as equal as possible, instead of filling it with tiny and huge states, like the English did on the East Coast.
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Alternatively, if your PoD is far enough back to split California in two, you could go the opposite direction that @Kevin Lessard talked about, and move California's eastern border a little more west.
[USER=40053]@Thisisnotausername[/USER] gave all the info you need on Clark County, and how loss to Arizona would not significantly impact Nevada until the mid 1900s.
If you are already keeping Clark County with Arizona and spliting California, why not have a shorter, wider Nevada that's a little more west? Even a half meridian would give Nevada most of the mountains its named for.
Granted, push too far and you run into the goldfields in the Sierra Nevadas, but depending on the PoD its possible to butterfly that to the right a few years, after borders are set down.
A lot of timelines cut chunks off Nevada or give it entirely to other states, you rarely see California being smaller outside of being split up. It would certainly be different, and an alt-Gold Rush offers a lot if potential for butterflies while solving your problem.
Edit: Formatting and spelling error from typing this on my phone.
Whoooooah there partner. If I'd known anybody was gonna take what I said so personally I wouldn't have been so blithe
I am well aware of all the specific historical context behind the weird state borders, and I'll admit that my use of the word "arbitrary" in my original comment may have been a smudge reductionist. By arbitrary, I meant with broad respect to geography, which straight lines generally don't take into account. Then, when I said stupid borders, I meant stupid-looking, not that there weren't reasons behind them. The OP was worried about having states with stupid-looking borders, and I was just pointing out that stupid-looking US state borders are not without precedent, not that such a precedent had been established for no reason.
yes Nevada OTL became a state before Vegas existed, for partisan political reasons but it was the 1950 census before Nevada minus Clark County had over 100k people which I was planning to make a threshold for statehood. by that time it would have been concluded Nevada would never reach the threshold and broken up among neighbors.
100k is a lot of people for statehood, and would drastically slow down the growth of states into the U.S. After all, the total population was barely 4 million in 1790.
Additionally, remember that Alaska and Hawaii were territories until 1959. If you want to carve up Nevada, its probably better to never make it a territory in the first place. Presuming that you'll start around the end of the Mexican-American War, just have Congress divide the land differently. After all, the Mexican Cession had parts of New Mexico, Colorado and even Wyoming. You have a lot of room to draw the borders and make entirely different states.
Depending on your PoD you could redraw the entire West. Like I said earlier, even delaying the gold rush results in a very different California. Slow down the growth there, or have two geographically separate population centers, like it seems you plan for California, and it almost requires a split California. At that point, depending how the slavery question went, the compromises needed to bring two free states in may require border adjustments before Congress approves, and boom, you can have smaller Californias, a bigger Utah, a fat Nevada, a mega-Colorado, the possibilites are pretty vast.
I'd merge most of Western Utah (west of the main settlements like SLC in the valley there) with Nevada. To compensate Utah, I'd give Colorado west of the continental divide to Utah. Colorado could get the Oklahoma panhandle and break up Wyoming instead (2nd least populous state most of its history), dividing it between neighboring states (mostly Colorado and Montana) along the Great Divide.
Why did physical size matter, each would get two senators and the House is based on population.
Nephi
Banned
Do you understand why Utah exist? Breaking it up would be splitting the Mormons into different states.
Nevada and Kinda Utah would still be pretty Mormon.
The US government wouldn't like that, whenever they found resources they'd usually slice off another bit of Utah off, until it became a state.
Larger Nevada has all the gold/silver rushes bringing in miners to supplement the initial Mormon settlers. West Colorado also has some mines which could do the same, but the LDS population was/is pretty low so understandably it might make sense not to attach it to Utah.
But given an early enough POD as OP seems to have, I wonder if that part of Colorado could be attached to the Mormon corridor.
But given an early enough POD as OP seems to have, I wonder if that part of Colorado could be attached to the Mormon corridor.
Depending on the PoD, Mormons could be butterflied completely.
While there have been some good ideas thrown around, without knowing @606jae 's PoD we can only be so specific how to divide the West.
I think he means that in an ideal world, States if equal size should have roughly equal population. Obviously that’s wrong in hindsight, but congress had no idea how quickly and in what patterns the West would eventually be settled so we can’t fault them for that
Make a Great Basin State that extends into western Oregon, northern California, and southern California.