{"id":24404,"date":"2021-01-11T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T01:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=24404"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:45","slug":"map-challenge-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2021\/01\/map-challenge-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Map Challenge II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asked and Answered 11<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n

As a followup to last year’s Map Challenge<\/em><\/a> post, I thought I would pose a few geo-nerd problems inspired by the Four Corners<\/a> in the southwestern U.S.\u00a0 As most of you know, there is only one spot in the U.S. — about 12 miles north of the Sinclair gas station<\/a> in Beclabito, NM — where four states meet at a single point.*\u00a0 But this begs the question: what about the near-misses?\u00a0 Shouldn’t those places get a little bit of nerd-love too?<\/p>\n

I will call these areas Four-State Circles — circles that include at least some part of four different states, other than the aforementioned Four Corners.\u00a0 Here are my challenges:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u00a0What and where in the U.S. is the smallest Four-State Circle (and its runner-up)?<\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0Similarly, what about the smallest Five-State Circle (and its runner-up)?<\/li>\n
  3. \u00a0Finally, the smallest Six-State Circle (and its runner-up)?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I am sure you’ll all agree that we can safely stop at six states without feeling like we have shortchanged the topic.\u00a0 So let’s go exploring — and here’s a map to help.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Four-State Circles<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

    When scanning the map for potential four-state solutions, the key is to focus on regions where two nearby states don’t share a border.\u00a0 This suggests a closer look at places like the Oklahoma panhandle and the contorted path of the Mississippi River south of Illinois.<\/p>\n

    But it turns out that both the winner and the runner-up for the smallest Four-State Circle lie east of the Appalachians.\u00a0 Surprisingly, neither circle involves Rhode Island, and both include my home state of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

    THE RUNNER-UP<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"Zoom to 39.594\u0274, 78.350\u1d21, 100 feet from Pepper Lane<\/a> in Doe Gully, West Virginia.\u00a0 Next draw a circle of 8.83 miles radius around that point.\u00a0 This circle touches four states: from north to south, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.\u00a0 This may be the runner-up Four-State Circle, but I believe it is the shortest path that crosses four states, a subtly different problem.
    \n<\/span><\/p>\n

    THE WINNER<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"Now shift your focus 200 miles eastward to 39.676\u0274<\/span>, 75.666\u1d21<\/span> in Delaware, across the street from an industrial park<\/a> in Christiana.\u00a0 A 6.55-mile radius circle around this point is mostly Delaware, with slivers of New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania.\u00a0 This would be a conflicted place to be a sports fan: 7 miles from three different states with major league sports teams, but not one to call your own.<\/p>\n

    Five-State Circles<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

    The Five-State Circles were more painstaking to sort through.\u00a0 It’s not like one can just enlarge a Four-State Circle a few miles in order to pick up a fifth state.\u00a0 And what’s worse, all of the obvious candidates were so similar in size that some very careful plotting was needed to find the winner.\u00a0 Here are the results:<\/p>\n

    THE RUNNER-UP<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"Take U.S. 60 toward Grayridge, Missouri, then head a couple of miles south, and you will find — besides a lot of farmland — the center of the runner-up Five-State Circle.\u00a0 This 28.8-mile-radius circle takes in parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, plus razor-thin slices of Arkansas and Illinois.\u00a0 S0, Grayridge, population 122, you are now on the map.\u00a0 Welcome to internet fame.<\/p>\n

    THE WINNER<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>Here is where the Oklahoma panhandle gets its chance to shine.\u00a0 A 27.1-mile radius circle centered on 36.892\u0274<\/span>, 102.514\u1d21<\/span>, just north of Boise City, touches parts of five states: New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.\u00a0 Although the center of the circle is now just a pile of rubble<\/a> next to U.S. 385, just wait until some enterprising Okie gets wind of this and builds a McDonalds there.<\/p>\n

    Six-State Circles<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

    There are two attractive candidates here — the area around Baltimore, MD, and the area around Springfield, MA.\u00a0 Only one of these, the smallest Six-State Circle, can be crowned the winner — the other will be the runner-up who, a la Miss USA<\/a>, will assume the title if for any reason the winner cannot fulfill its duties.\u00a0 So, may I have the envelope please…<\/p>\n

    THE RUNNER-UP<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"Cold Bottom Road<\/a> crosses Piney Creek and I-83 at 39.563\u0274<\/span>, 76.665\u1d21<\/span>, just north of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame<\/a> in Sparks, Maryland.\u00a0 The six states within 58.9 miles of this spot are: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, West Virginia and Virginia.\u00a0 If Washington, D.C., were a state, this would be the winning Seven-State Circle but sorry — rules are rules.<\/p>\n

    THE WINNER<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"The center of the smallest Six-State Circle is American Legion Post 452<\/a> in Chicopee, MA, at 42.1456\u0274<\/span>, 72.6140\u1d21<\/span>.\u00a0 (The post meets on the fourth Thursday of each month at 17:30, so snap to it.)\u00a0 This 43.2-mile radius circle covers parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont plus thin slices of New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.\u00a0 And yes, Rhode Island is<\/em> a state, not a plantation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    So there you have it, asked and — exhaustively — answered.\u00a0 But for those who need even more bar-bet material, here’s one last bit of U.S. state-border trivia.\u00a0 The number of places where three (or four) states meet is (a) 55, (b) 68 or (c) 92.\u00a0 Answer below.<\/p>\n

    _______________<\/p>\n

    * The four states which meet at one spot are Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.\u00a0 And by my count, there are 55 places in the U.S. where three or four states meet at a point.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Asked and Answered 11 As a followup to last year’s Map Challenge post, I thought I would pose a few geo-nerd problems inspired by the Four Corners in the southwestern U.S.\u00a0 As most of you know, there is only one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asked-and-answered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24404"}],"version-history":[{"count":103,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27325,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24404\/revisions\/27325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}