Mondays can be a drag, so let's liven things up with a #geoweirdness thread.
Last week we looked at geographic oddities of Australia , this week let's head to the New World
and turn our attention to Mexico
.
1/n
2/ The United States and Mexico
share the world’s most frequently crossed international boundary, with approximately 350M legal crossings/year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border
3/ The MX/US border has changed many times over the years.
“New Spain” extended much farther north as many Spanish place names in southwestern US attest. Here's a picture of the Arkansas River in Pueblo, Colorado - once the northern border of the historical province of Nuevo México
4/ When the Mexican-American
war ended in 1848 about 45% of Mexico was ceded to the United States, what is today parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War#Altered_territories
5/ Then in 1854 to make building a transcontinental railroad easier, the US purchased a large area of modern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico, a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase
6/ The border is still in flux as the Rio Grande / Río Bravo del Norte river continues to move, and most recently the border was readjusted by mutual agreement in 2009. #geoweirdness
These changes are covered by a treaty signed in 1970
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Treaty_of_1970
7/ Little known is that at one point Mexico also had a dispute with ...
France about the ownership of Clipperton Island in the Pacific. Arbitration determined the island to belong to France. #geoweirdness
8/ Though the external border is no longer in dispute, several Mexican states disagree on their borders. Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán all claim slightly overlapping territories. #geoweirdness
9/ The Yucatán peninsula was actually briefly an independent country, the Republic of Yucatán, before finally joining Mexico in 1848.
10/ The capital of Mexico is Mexico City (often abbreviated as “CDMX”).
It is the largest city in North America, a megalopolis with an estimated 30M people. The urban area continues to expand.
11/ Beyond lat/long, also of note is the z-axis (altitude). Mexico City is sinking as the water level drops. In the last 100 years the city has dropped more than 10 meters! #geoweirdness
12/ Wrapping up, if Mexican geography is your thing, you may enjoy our interview from back in 2018 with Miriam Gonzalez about OpenStreetMap in Mexico.
We hope you enjoyed our look at Mexican #geoweirdness. Thanks for reading (and sharing).
We have many more threads about other countries, border disputes, exclaves, geocoding, etc listed on our blog. Most still on twitter, but over time we are moving them here to masto.
https://blog.opencagedata.com/geothreads
We'll feature more countries in coming weeks and months