, showing the cleared strip of land along the U.S./Canada border
History In 1714, the Hudson's Bay Company proposed the 49th parallel as the western portion of the boundary between the company's land and French territory. At the time, Britain and France had agreed, in the
Peace of Utrecht, to negotiate a boundary, but negotiations ultimately failed. Following the
Louisiana Purchase by the United States in 1803, it was generally agreed that the boundary between the new territory and
British North America was along the
watershed between the
Missouri River and
Mississippi River basins on one side and the
Hudson Bay basin on the other. However, it is often difficult to precisely determine the location of a watershed in a region of level plains, such as in central
North America. The British and American committees that met after the
War of 1812 to resolve boundary disputes recognized there would be much animosity in surveying the watershed boundary, and agreed on a simpler border solution in the
Treaty of 1818: the 49th parallel. Both sides gained and lost some territory by this convention, but the United States gained more than it lost, in particular securing title to the
Red River Basin. This treaty established the boundary only between the line of longitude of the northwesternmost point of
Lake of the Woods, on the east, and the
Rocky Mountains, on the west. West of the Rockies, the treaty established joint occupation of the
Oregon Country by both parties; east of Lake of the Woods, the boundary established in the
Treaty of Paris would be retained. Although the Convention of 1818 settled the boundary, neither country was immediately able to take control over the territories on its side of the line; effective control still rested with local First Nations peoples, mainly the
Métis,
Assiniboine,
Lakota, and
Blackfoot. Their power was gradually ceded by conquest and treaty during the several decades that followed. Among these peoples, the 49th parallel was nicknamed the
Medicine Line because of its seemingly magical ability to prevent U.S. soldiers from crossing it. In the
1844 U.S. presidential election, the
Democratic Party asserted that the northern border of the
Oregon Territory should be 54°40′, later reflected in the 1846 slogan "
Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!" However, the
Oregon boundary dispute was settled diplomatically in the 1846 Oregon Treaty. This agreement divided the Oregon Country between
British North America and the United States by extending the 49th parallel boundary to the west coast, ending in the
Strait of Georgia; it then circumvents
Vancouver Island through
Boundary Pass,
Haro Strait, and the
Strait of Juan de Fuca. This had the side effect of isolating
Point Roberts, Washington.
As border from
Surrey, British Columbia. s of
British Columbia,
Alberta,
Saskatchewan and
Manitoba (to the north), and the
U.S. states of
Washington,
Idaho,
Montana,
North Dakota and
Minnesota (to the south). Although parts of Vancouver Island and parts of Eastern Canada are south of the 49th parallel, and parts of the United States (
Alaska,
Northwest Angle) are north of it, the term
49th parallel is sometimes used
metonymically to refer to the entire Canada–U.S. border. Actually, many of Canada's most populated regions (and about 72% of the population) are south of the 49th parallel, including the two largest cities
Toronto (43°42′ north) and
Montreal (45°30′ north). The federal capital
Ottawa (45°25′ north), and the provincial capital of seven provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and British Columbia) are south of the 49th parallel. Three provinces, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, are each entirely south of the parallel, but the vast majority of Canadian territory lies north of it. Parts of the 49th parallel were originally surveyed using astronomical techniques that did not take into account slight departures of the Earth's shape from a simple
ellipsoid, or the deflection of the
plumb-bob by differences in terrestrial mass. The surveys were subject to the limitations of early to mid-19th century technology; consequently, in some places the surveyed border is several hundred feet from the geographical 49th parallel for the currently adopted
datum, the
North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83). The
Digital Chart of the World (DCW), which uses the Clarke 1866 ellipsoid, reports the border on average at latitude 48° 59′ 51″ north, roughly south of the modern 49th parallel. It ranges between 48° 59′ 25″ and 49° 0′ 10″ north, and on either side of the average. In any case, the Earth's North Pole moves around slightly, notionally moving the 49th and other parallels with it; see
polar motion. The
Northwest Angle is the only part of the contiguous 48 states that goes north of the 49th parallel as surveyed. The
Treaty of Paris called for the boundary between the US and British territory to pass through the most northwesterly point of Lake of the Woods, and this was retained even after
an 1818 treaty set the boundary west of that point to follow the 49th parallel. At the time that the United States and Great Britain agreed on the 49th parallel as the boundary, much of the North American continent had not yet been mapped. After the boundary was established, British surveyors discovered that
Point Roberts lay south of the 49th parallel. The British requested that the United States cede the territory to Great Britain, but no action was ever taken. In 1909 the United States,
United Kingdom, and Canada signed and ratified a treaty confirming the original survey lines as the official and permanent international border. Nevertheless, in 2002 the difference of the survey from the geographical 49th parallel was argued in front of the
Washington Supreme Court in the case of
State of Washington v. Norman, under the premise that Washington did not properly incorporate the portions of land north of the geographical 49th parallel, as laid out by detailed
GPS surveying. The court decided against the premise, ruling that the internationally surveyed boundary also served as the state boundary, regardless of its actual position. == Ordnance Survey of Great Britain ==