Why are Wyoming and Colorado square?

[barney15c]

Is there a specific reason why Wyoming and Colorado's state borders make them square (or more accurately rectangular) in shape?

[jno]

presumably created with lines on a map rather than according to natural boundaries like rivers. This was probably because very few people were already living there at the time so you didn't have a lot of settlers demanding to be in one state or the other.

[Clanad]

jno isn't that far afield... Wyoming is a conglomeration of a State carved from several different Territories. Originating, primarily from land within the Louisiana Purchase it derived from The Dakota, Nebraska and Washington Territories... as jno points out, there are no natural features that consitutes any of my home State's borders. In actuallity, it isn't even rectangular, mush less square, since any attempt to project a square on a sphere results in the sides defined by longitudinal lines converging. I suppose a more accurate geometrical description would be a trapezoid...
By the way, many of the landlocked, western states display the same general feature of rectangularness such as Nebraska, Utah and even some borders of Idaho, Montana and North and South Dakota....

[vehelpfulguy]

It helps to have an understanding of the way the 50 states developed.

Because most settlers to the USA came from Europe it was the EAST of the country where the first states were developed.

Here is a picture of the USA in the early 1800s and the only States are on the right, shown in orange.

http://www.craigsams.com/images/Louisiana%20Pu rchase%20copy.jpg

In fact the American Civil war was almost totally fought in the East of the country, amongst these few States.

The area in the centre, the Louisiana Territory, in green was owned by the French I believe.

The area on the far left was owned by Spain (This is why the towns on the west have "Spanish" sounding names like Los Angeles and San Diago.

more....

[vehelpfulguy]

continued....

Eventually the French sold the Louisiana area to the Americans in something called the Louisiana Purchase.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchas e

As has been stated, because these lands were almost totally uninhabited (except by native americans) and the land mass was huge, it was easy to create new states, you mostly used a ruler !

When this land in the West became available for use by the people in the East there was a huge move of people to the West, and because it was rather wild and untamed, for a while it was known as the Wild West, and spawned hundreds of cowboy films.

In fact we tend to think of the USA as one country, but if you think of the NAME of the country it is the United States of America.

In fact before the USA was formed by those original 13 or so states in the east each state had their own language, their own money system and so on.

It took a lot of effort to unify them as one country, rather like is happening in Europe now, with many different countries but an attempt to have a standard currency, and common laws and so on, a United States of Europe.

[barney15c]

Thank you gents for all your helpful answers.