When and Where Should You Handwave Surveying Errors?

*Put in Pre-1900 because most of the errors I'll be talking about are before 1900.

Surveying errors: When and where should you handwave them?

IOTL, lots of surveying mistakes were made - the upward-curving southern border of Virginia, the piece of Virginia on the Delmarva peninsula, Arkansas' western border, and the two miles of New Mexico on top of the Texas Panhandle.

In alternate history with similar borders, when and where should we adjust mistaken boundaries like these accordingly to their intended positions?
 
That really depends on your tolerance for minutia and the time you have.

If a different border has some significance for your timeline-perhaps giving a confederate state a better defensive positions or extending a Native American tribe's territory into a friendlier state-then that is worth putting in.

However, if it doesn't really make that much of a difference, it's a pretty niggling detail even by this site's standards.
 
*Put in Pre-1900 because most of the errors I'll be talking about are before 1900.

Surveying errors: When and where should you handwave them?

IOTL, lots of surveying mistakes were made - the upward-curving southern border of Virginia, the piece of Virginia on the Delmarva peninsula, Arkansas' western border, and the two miles of New Mexico on top of the Texas Panhandle.

In alternate history with similar borders, when and where should we adjust mistaken boundaries like these accordingly to their intended positions?

I dunno....though I should point out that of the examples you posted, only the example with New Mexico was an actual mistake(and possibly the latter Virginia example, although that's not for certain). Everything else had a reason to it. ;)
 
I dunno....though I should point out that of the examples you posted, only the example with New Mexico was an actual mistake(and possibly the latter Virginia example, although that's not for certain). Everything else had a reason to it. ;)

Peter Jefferson was supposed to survey part of Virginia at 36"30', it veered northward. The Delmarva border between Maryland and Virginia is supposed to be at Cape Henlopen, but a mistaken map (due to surveying errors) changed that.
 
Peter Jefferson was supposed to survey part of Virginia at 36"30', it veered northward. The Delmarva border between Maryland and Virginia is supposed to be at Cape Henlopen, but a mistaken map (due to surveying errors) changed that.

Hmm....well, come to think of it, it seems I misread the part about Virginia. My mistake, I'm a bit out of it at the moment. :eek:
 
*Put in Pre-1900 because most of the errors I'll be talking about are before 1900.

Surveying errors: When and where should you handwave them?

IOTL, lots of surveying mistakes were made - the upward-curving southern border of Virginia, the piece of Virginia on the Delmarva peninsula, Arkansas' western border, and the two miles of New Mexico on top of the Texas Panhandle.

In alternate history with similar borders, when and where should we adjust mistaken boundaries like these accordingly to their intended positions?

I recently read about the border between South Carolina and Georgia. If changes are made people will end up living in a State they don't want to. It goes back to the early 1800's which I think they should leave it alone.
 
That really depends on your tolerance for minutia and the time you have.

Exactly this. Personally I love TLs which pay attention to the minutiae, and I'd personally have a lot of time for a TL which actually created TTL surveying errors which never happened in OTL.
 
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