[PW] Texas Geography Question [was: Texas Flag Question]

[Nichael Cramer]

As a Yankee who spent several years in Texas, I hope someone can answer
a question about a curious little feature of Texan geography that I've always
wondered about, but never been able to find a good answer to.

Looking at a map of the US, if one proceeds north along the eastern edge
of New Mexico one will travel along next to the Texas Panhandle, and then
along beside a narrow strip of Oklahoma before bumping into Colorado.

Now at first glance it appears this trip (along the Texas/Oklahoma border of
New Mexico) is on a single, straight line.

However, if you look at a map of sufficient resolution, you will see that the
Oklahoma portion of that border is offset to the east by about a mile or so,
relative to the Texas portion of the border.  (That is, New Mexico appears
to "intrude" into Oklahoma by about a mile along the northern stretch 
of the border.)

Does anyone know why this is?  Does this "indentation" have a name?

[Someone suggested perhaps this is related to famous "jogs" that north-south
roads in the American midwest take to compensate for the curvature of
the earth.  However, most straight borders between states seem to pretty
strictly follow lines of longitude without similar jogs (e.g the series of
borders for NE, SD, ND).  Another friend suggested that a possibly more
likely explanation was that this involved the border of the ranch of some
politically powerful individual at the time the borders were layed out.  ;-) ]

Anyway, I thought I would ask if anyone know anything about this.

Thanks
Nichael

--
Nichael Cramer
Guilford VT
nichael at sover.net
http://www.sover.net/~nichael/