Colorado’s border deviations

Is Colorado a perfect rectangle?

Created by: FascinatingMaps.com

Colorado is bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas to the east, Oklahoma to the southeast, New Mexico to the south, Utah to the west, and touches Arizona to the southwest at the Four Corners.

The borders of Colorado were fixed in 1850. The borders of Colorado were originally defined to be lines of latitude and longitude, making its shape a latitude-longitude quadrangle which stretches from 37° N to 41° N latitude, and from 102.05° W to 109. 05° W longitude. On the northern side, the border is shorter than the southern one because circles of latitude get shorter as they get farther from the equator and closer to the poles. Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah are the only U.S. states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude.

Originally published at https://www.vividmaps.com on October 2, 2018.