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The Northwest Angle
The chimney on the map of Minnesota, the only part of the lower 48 states north of the 49th parallel
Look at a map of the United States and you will see a small bump poking up above the straight northern border of Minnesota. That bump is the Northwest Angle, the northernmost point of the contiguous United States and one of the odder results of an eighteenth-century map error. It is cut off from the rest of Minnesota by the waters of Lake of the Woods, and the only road in runs through the Canadian province of Manitoba. Visitors arriving by car report to customs by phone or video kiosk at an unstaffed post. A permanent population of about 150 people lives here, alongside fishing resorts that fill with anglers in summer and ice fishermen in winter.
The Angle is a peninsula of forest, bog, and shoreline on the western side of Lake of the Woods, bordered by Manitoba to the west and Ontario to the north and east. Together with dozens of islands, it forms Angle Township in Lake of the Woods County, which covers about 319 square kilometers of land and much more of water. The main settlement is Angle Inlet. From Warroad, Minnesota, the drive is roughly 100 kilometers, heading north into Manitoba and then east on a gravel road back across the border. In summer, boats cross the lake directly to the US mainland, and in winter ice roads do the same. The 2020 census counted 149 residents in the township.
Negotiators of the 1783 Treaty of Paris described the border as running from the northwesternmost point of Lake of the Woods due west to the Mississippi River. They relied on the Mitchell Map, which wrongly placed the river's source far to the north, so the line as written was impossible to draw. An 1818 convention ran the border south from the lake's northwest point to the 49th parallel, and the 1842 Webster–Ashburton Treaty fixed that point, leaving the Angle on the American side. Residents have occasionally floated joining Canada as a protest. During the pandemic border closures of 2020 and 2021, locals built a toll ice road across the lake to keep business flowing.