Iowa Geography Question

[Acylum]

Why do the fourth and sixth tiers of counties have those strange juts on their western borders?

 

[aauummm]

Here's a good answer (I'm too lazy to type out a complete answer):

Google Search

 

[theshadow]

Short answer: survey corrections.

Long answer:

 

[CtownCyclone]

Texas has some interesting things going on as well...

 

[Clone1992]

Florida looks like a penis.

 

[pourcyne]

We live on a globe not a flat earth.

 

[Turn2]

We live on a globe not a flat earth.

Now you've opened a can o' worms.

 

[hoosman]

The Missouri River (Western Border) flows diagonally between those two tiers. In order to maintain perpendicularity, a small amount of the shift of the Western border is allocated to each of the counties to the east.

 

[MeanDean]

View attachment 152872
Why do the fourth and sixth tiers of counties have those strange juts on their western borders?

What about that one on the top tier that's equivalent to two or all its neighbors? Then to make it worse the one under it loses the bottom 1/4 to the county below it. They could have given some of that double sized one to it to make up for getting screwed.

 

[CloneFanInKC]

Texas has some interesting things going on as well...

View attachment 152874

I once worked for a company that I was responsible for creating/designing sales territories from Chicago/NOLA west. Texas and CA were a challenge for separate reasons but I specifically recall the uniqueness of TX due to county layout.

 

[CloneFanInKC]

What about that one on the top tier that's equivalent to two or all its neighbors? Then to make it worse the one under it loses the bottom 1/4 to the county below it. They could have given some of that double sized one to it to make up for getting screwed.

Fun fact IMO; as a kid I used that oversized territory in the fourth tier (Webster) to identify where my county was when a TV station would bring up a weather alert map.

 

[Cy4Lifer]

I once worked for a company that I was responsible for creating/designing sales territories from Chicago/NOLA west. Texas and CA were a challenge for separate reasons but I specifically recall the uniqueness of TX due to county layout.

View attachment 152872
Why do the fourth and sixth tiers of counties have those strange juts on their western borders?

Latitude lines are parallel, and even though longitude lines appear to be parallel, they are not. Longitude lines get closer together the farther north you go in the northern hemisphere, and so those adjustments had to be made as those longitude lines got closer together.

 

[Cy4Lifer]

What about that one on the top tier that's equivalent to two or all its neighbors? Then to make it worse the one under it loses the bottom 1/4 to the county below it. They could have given some of that double sized one to it to make up for getting screwed.

That county is Kossuth County. I believe it is larger because it had something to do with the number of counties in the state of Iowa, and the politics wanted an odd number? Maybe some historian can clarify this.

 

[cydnote]

View attachment 152872
Why do the fourth and sixth tiers of counties have those strange juts on their western borders?

I may be alone on this, but I think our forefathers were foresighted enough to realize that there would be a significant lull between the end basketball season and the start of football and we could potentially run out of topics to fill that void, so they designed the layout to inspire those questions

 

[FLYINGCYCLONE]

For a short time, a couple years maybe, Kossuth County was split into 2 counties. The decision was made to do away with the north county. Sorry, I forgot what the north county was called. There was not many people that lived up north, and a few influential people didn’t want the area to be 2 counties, so it is Kossuth County.