Surrounded on 3 sides by Canada, U.S. residents of Northwest Angle learn to live with odd 'geographic reality'

JeanetteMcAtee recoils in mock horror when she remembers her husband's suggestion theymovetothe Northwest Angle the northernmost point in Minnesota, and one of the most isolated slivers of the American dream.

McAtee wanted nothing to do with an existence where you have to cross aninternational border twice just to visit the doctor's office.

Twenty years later, she rises from her chair in the wood-panelled shop she and her husband built, in this community she never wanted to live in. She has long since become convinced.

"I'm glad we moved," she says with a smile. "I wouldn't have said that when we moved.I thought, 'Oh my gosh,'" chuckling at the memory.

McAtee's store has become a lifesaver in this geographical oddity, some 300 square kilometres ofland thatappears on a maplike the United States is jabbingits thumb into Canada's gut.

It looks, as well, like it doesn't belong in the contiguousU.S. and the fact isit wouldn't exist if not for a surveyor's mistake.

The Northwest Angle's only land link is its western border with Manitoba. To the north and east is the border with Ontario. It's technically part of Minnesota but with Lake of the Woods to the south, it shares no land connection with the rest of the state.

Mapping confusion

McAteeruns a convenience store brimming withassorted trinkets like wooden bowls andrugs, and basics, like cartons of milk. It needs to be all things to all people, because the nearestcompetition is at least 100 kilometres in any direction.

In the Angle, as it's affectionately known bylocals, you don't go back for the carton of eggs you neglected to pick up while out of town you forget about it.

This makes her shop essential to the hardy 120 people who live in the community year-round and frequent the few haunts: the convenience store, the restaurant, the church and their small shack of a post office.

"People help each other out all the time," McAtee says, as a customer jokingly bickers in the background.

"Talk about characters, we have several," she adds. "Let's say we're all unique up here in a way."

Paul and Karen Colsonare amused bya recent petition that suggested this splinter of Minnesota that they call home should be handed over to Canada.

It was pitched on a U.S. governmentwebsite late last month by someone who identified themselves only as "C.C."

The appeal brought another round of attention to this orphaned frontier of the U.S., whose residents seem just fine with where they are in the world.

On a map, the Northwest Angle doesn't make sense but that's because it owes its existence as part of the U.S. to surveying errors and awkward attempts to form a border in the early days of the United States of America.

It came about due to relianceon a map that misidentified the source of the Mississippi River, and the shape of Lake of the Woods, when drawing up borders in the late 1700s.

It was determined the border between the U.S. and British holdings would run from the northwest corner of Lake of the Woods west to the Mississippi River which was in fact south, not west.

In the early 19th century, an attempt was madeto correct the mistake, with a decisionthe border would run due south from the northwest corner of Lake of the Woods. That, however, cut off the piece of land now known as the Northwest Angle.

Hence, the Angle became the only place in the United States outside Alaska that is north of the49thparallel.

'Chimney of Minnesota'

The Colsons don't mind the attention that brings. As year-round fishing lodge owners, the exposure generates tourismand, hopefully,business.

But visiting this so-called "chimney of Minnesota" isonerous. By land, visitors coming over the gravel road from southeastern Manitobadon't meet anymenacingborder walls, or even a single border agent.

Rather, they find a heated shack with a podium staffed by an iPad,whichdoesn'tturn on in frigid weather. That's where visitors are supposed to register that they're crossing into the U.S. The alternative is to call border officialsor use a mobile app on your phone, neither of which are of use to visitors with spottycellphone service.

Thankfully, there are locations in townwhere the iPads do work to permit legal border crossing,includingJake's Northwest Angle resort, which isowned by the Colsons.

Crossing the border routinely is a hassle thatresidents of the community of Angle Inlet, Minn. located in the Northwest Angleget used to, butit's obvious the authorities don't care toomuch, Paul said.

"If you're really worried about people going into the Angle, then put a customs [office] up down the road and let's just go ahead and check people through. Otherwise," he said,"it's not really a problem."

Their family's abode is a shrine to a life spent outdoors.Pictures hang on the wall ofgame their three sons hunted, deer antlers are mountedandtaxidermy lynx and elk hang over their loft.

To live in the Angle, they say, is to sacrifice.

"We are so far away from the rest of the U.S.that you don't have any of the things that people just normally take for granted," Paul said.

"Can you imagine having to tell people to have a passport to come over for supper at your house?"

When they were in school, the Colsons'kids, now young adults, left for classes in Warroad, Minn. a 100-kilometre drive to the south at six in the morning. They went by bus, and there was no way they could stick around for organized sports.

"It didn't matter if they wanted to or not," Karen Colson said.

To get there by land involves crossing the Canada-U.S. border twice once heading into Manitoba to the west, and then again heading into Minnesota to the south.

"This is our geographic reality," her husband added. "You have to accept this is how life is."

Errands few and far between

Unless they must get parts immediately, they leavetown only when they have a list of things to purchase. Paul hasn't bothered with a paid haircut in 20 years that's done at home.

There are intricacies to life you wouldn't think of. They are legally barred from bringing home produce they bought in Warroad since it technically has to enter Canada, then go back into the U.S. to get to the Angle.

The restrictions have also changed over time, depending on the trade disputeof the day a past control on bringing eggs from Canada into the U.S., for example.

"People were bringing cases of eggs by boat to supply the restaurants up here," Karen said.

It can become socomplicated thetownshipflirted withjoiningCanadain the late 1990s.

They threatened to secede from the U.S. when Ontario toldanglers fishing in Canadianwaters they could only keep their catch if they stayed in Canadian lodgings overnight. The restrictions eventually handicapped fishingresorts like the Colsons'.

To garner attention for their isolated community, they concocted an outlandish stunt that hadtheir Minnesota congressman, Collin Peterson, proposing a constitutional amendment to empowerhis constituents to become Canadians.

"He went to the floor, read it, and then everything broke loose," said Paul, who recalled carryinga book called How to Start Your Own Country to his first meeting with Peterson.

Flirting with seceding

He said they never intended to secede, but the whirlwind of press got their country to fight for them.

There were silver linings to the dispute, though: Paul says he never would have met his wife, Karenoriginally of Dauphin, Man.if he didn't have to clear customs at the lake. She was working a summer job on the Canadian side of Lake of the Woods.

Once they became an item,theyconsidered living elsewhere. They tried Alaska, butkept feeling drawn to the Angle. They stuck around afterPaul's father died unexpectedly and the fishing lodge was entrusted to them, the third generation of the family to run it.

"I've always had five-, 10-, 20-year plans," Paul said, when asked if living in the Angle has been worth it. "Raising a family was always my goal, and I've got great kids."

Life in the Angle is harder by yourself, reasonslong-term residentMichelle Friend. You have to be OK with the solitude.

"There's so many women who come up here and they can't find anything to do," she said. "If you don't like to be outdoors, there isn't a lot other thanI don't know fishing, hiking, boating.

"But I really liked the area. In the 21 years I've lived here,I've learned how to snowmobile, how to drive a boat, how to repair all kinds of equipment."

Bundled up in a yellow parka and trapper's hat, she works as a housekeeper at Jake's resort year-round and runs a lawn-cutting operationinthe summer. A second job can be criticalto make ends meet.

She saidher grocery shopping is supplemented by neighbours offering their hunted game and fish, free of charge. People look out for each other here, she said.

Locally grown food

"Every dayI go down the road and I wave at every car I meet, and I bet maybe once a week it's someone I don't know," she recalls. "They'd feel bad if I didn't wave and I'd feel bad if they didn't waveit's that sort of community."

One of her occasional greeters would beGeorge Risser, the 78-year-old formerpostmaster(he was replaced in the job byhis wife).

On the front steps of his home, he munchesa cookie while scanning the snow-swept marshland and its pockets of forest and open spaces.

The community's nine-hole golf course ishis backyard.

While happy, Risser longs a bit for the past, before the 1970s, when there wasn't a gravel road leading intotheir community. The former employee of a Nebraska hydro company yearns, ironically, for the days when there was no electricity here either.

"I think people like it the way things are now, but I don't as much. I can remember what it was like back when there was less people around and I knew everybody. Now I don't know hardly anybody."

Around the bend, Bill Magoon, who's lived in the Northwest Angle for just under a decade, knows about life here more recently, after the road from the west provided an established link.

He doesn't want this place to get any more populated, though.

"The only thing that'd mess up this place is if they pave the road and too many city people come here," he laughed, lounging on his couch as the setting sun casta shadow inhis living room.

He and his wife, Nancy, have lived together in the Northwest Angle sincespurning the bustle ofupstate New York almost 10 years ago for the comparative solitude of a homestead, where you set up a trough in your front lawn for thedeer.

"We just figured we would be here and the kids will be wherever you know, doing their own thing," Nancysaid.

But then their daughters followed suit. Their youngest met a guy from the Angle andgot married. Their oldest daughter stuck around, too, when the rest of her family settledhere.

The best part of this slice of the rural United States, Bill explains, is that pretty much everyone who lives in the Angle wants to be here.

He approaches the kitchen where his wife is making a batch of chicken divan. They're hosting some friends later that night. Dinner parties, hosted by the Magoons or their neighbours, happen two or three times a week, Bill says.

"That wouldn't happen in New York."

Watch CBC's televisionfeature on those living in the Northwest Angle:

U.S. residents of Northwest Angle learn to live with odd 'geographic reality'

6 years ago

Duration 3:47

The Northwest Angle the northernmost point in Minnesota, and one of the most isolated slivers of the American dream.