Northwest Angle

The Northwest Angle is a small part of northern Minnesota that is the only part of the United States outside of Alaska that is north of the 49th parallel. That parallel is the northern boundary of the 48 contiguous states extending eastward from the west coast along the northern boundaries of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and part of Minnesota to the Northwest Angle. Further east, the USA does not extend that far north. Map projections sometimes create an optical illusion that Maine extends further north than that; that illusion does not occur in maps in which parallels of latitude are straight lines. Like Alaska, the Northwest Angle cannot be reached from the rest of the USA without either going through Canada or crossing water --- specifically, the Lake of the Woods.

The peace treaty concluded between the United States and Britain at the end of the American Revolution stated that the boundary between the USA and British possesions to the north would continue "from the center of the Lake of the Woods" along a line going directly west until it reached the Mississippi River. The parties did not suspect that the source of the Mississippi, Lake Itasca, was south of that point. Consequently the Northwest Angle is the result of 18th-century ignorance of geography.

The Northwest Angle has only about 100 inhabitants.