So for those of you who know me; may know I enjoy looking at old maps. So I was interested today when I stumbled upon a map of the United States with only 38 states... now I know your saying "Oh that would be a map of the US in which Colorado had just earned statehood in 1876!" Ok so none of you probably knew that, but even if you had you would have been wrong. The map I'm talking about was drawn by George Etzel Pearch in the 1970's.
Who was George Etzel Pearcy and why did he come up with this crazy map is my question for today. Pearcy was a geography professor from the university of California State and he developed the map as a way of creating boundaries that made the country more politically balanced. As our current state boundaries were made long ago when the country was still growing and had low populations, the boundaries are often natural boundaries of rivers or simple boundaries like lines of latitude. What’s the problem with that you may ask? Pearcy argued that issues major cities spreading across two states (like New York or Kansas City) was a problem economically and politically as well as the population balance between states.
His solution was to divide the country up based on location of major cities, population, physical features, and routes/methods transportation. In doing so he came up with 38 states which he named after physical and cultural features of the area (I'd be living in the state of Wabash if we used his suggestion).
Though it seems there may be some flaws in his map, such as cities growing and the logistics of changing all of the state lines... so yeah it'll never happen but I found it an interesting interpretation.
No comments:
Post a Comment