Proof of rampant drug use in America's Past?

[BOSSHOG]

I think its fair to say that some stimuli was needed to come up with lyrics like I am the Eggman, you are the Walrus, coo, coo, cachoo, and go ask Alice when she's ten feet tall. But have you ever looked at a map of your state and tried to figure out how county boundaries ever came about? Me believes the great land surveyors who gave us such zigzag were stimulated as well.

[RPM]

1. either that or...

they didnt have GPS to make their job easy and lines straight...

[LynneSin]

2. You know, county borders make more sense the Congressional Districts

Those borders are even more fucked up and some of the worst like Texas & Pennsylvania were done by repukes!!

[MemphisTiger]

3. Alot of that was due to existing property owners

property lines don't always follow a straight line.

[izzie]

4. I think it was sold from the back of a wagon. Always with us

These 'good old days' we are to go back to were just not there. I do not know where people get that stuff.

[Squeech]

5. Geography

Rivers, swamps, mountains, all sorts of natural features that made it easier for a covered wagon to go this way rather than that way.

Note that, where it's easy (like the Great Plains), the county lines are perfectly squared off. One chunk of buffalo grass was just like every other chunk.

Also, contrary to what the manifest destiny preachers would have you believe, there were people living here before the European settlers, and they had their own turf that the Americans worked around-- until such time as they got strong enough to kill them all.

Although, to answer your original point, it is known that George Washington was a surveyor in his youth, and it is also known that he grew hemp. So it is possible he doubled his pleasures. But I don't think that's the explanation for the map.

[Aiptasia]

6. Then how do you explain Colorado?

The "Square" state?

[northzax]

8. easy

the places where lines are crazy are in the east, where people were settled before incorporation and people wanted their property to be in the same state.

in the midwest and the west, the lines tend to follow things like rivers, since they laid out the lines before white folk owned the land.

[johnnie]

7. I often wondered that also

What the hell were they on?

I think they should get rid of the "state" concept all together, it's outdated and unnecessary. Or at least just break it up into North, West, South and East. For a country that is supposedly "United" we do everything we can to divide ourselves.