Petition calls for U.S. to give Northwest Angle to Canada

There is a call for the U.S.government to adjust the border near Manitoba to give Canada thegeographic oddity known astheNorthwest Angle.

Known simply asthe Angleto the 120 people who live there, it is a jetty of Minnesota sandwiched betweenManitoba and northwestern Ontario.

It is the only place in the United States outside Alaska that is north of the49thparallel. And itwas based on a flawedmap from 1755.

"MakeAmericagreat by correcting this critical survey error," states a petition, called"Give Canada back the Northwest Angle located in Manitoba," andcreated as part ofWe the People.

Launched in September2011 under then-PresidentBarack Obama, We the People is a section of the White House website forpetitioningpolicy experts. Petitions that meet a certain threshold of signatures are typically reviewed by administration officials who are prepared to issueofficial responses.

Thethreshold for a response is100,000 signatures, so itcould take some more for theNorthwest Angle petition to find its way onto the desk of U.S. Congress.

It was created Sunday,and as of Wednesday, had just 32signatures.

The international boundary that takes in the Northwest Angle was made shortly after the Treaty of Paris in 1783 between the U.S. and Britain.

However,Benjamin Franklin and British representatives relied on a 1755map from American John Mitchell, who was not a professional geographer or map-maker.

He was aphysician and botanist who developed an interest in geography and created his map based on materials he found in official archives and private hands. But he misattributed the source of the Mississippi River as being at the edge of Lake of the Woods,and drew the lake itself in the shape of an oval rather than bent and bowed by the multiple bays it actually contains.

The Treaty of Paris stated the boundary between U.S. territory and the British possessions to the north would run "...through the Lake of the Woods to thenorthwestern-most pointthereof, and from thence on a due west course to theriver Mississippi."

The source of the Mississippi River, however, actually lies nearly due south of Lake of the Woods, rather than north and west of it.

The end result is a thumb of landisolated from the rest of the U.S. In those months when Lake of the Woods is free of ice, Angle residents can reach the mainland U.S. directly by boat.

However, to make the journey by land,residents must pass through two Canada-U.S. borders at the east and southern boundaries of Manitoba.

"Even the most mundane tasks involve a certain amount of shuttle diplomacy. Grocery shopping is once a week, and that's an hour and 15minutes, one way," states a story on the region by CBS News in 2016.

"First, residents have to notify Canadian authorities that they're about to cross the border. Then, it's a 60-mile [96.6-km] or so trek through Canada back to the U.S. boundary line to cross back into Minnesota and the nearest town."