Vlog #011: The US states that weren’t.

I’m fascinated by stories of states, countries and territories that almost existed or might exist. Seriously does Montana really need all that land? We could bust that up and have five, six new states right there.

Here are maps of the non-states I mentioned in the video:

Here’s the three regions that make up modern Oklahoma: Oklahoma Territory, the Indian Territory, and a narrow strip of land nobody really knew what to do with. The Oklahoma panhandle was originally part of the Republic of Texas. When Texas entered the union it had the option to join as a slave state, as all new states south of 36.5°N lattitude did. Texas had this tiny strip of land north of the cutoff line, though, and nobody wanted to deal with a part slave/part free state, so they just ceded the land to the federal government as a condition of statehood. It just kind of sat there not doing much of anything until Oklahoma applied for statehood, when it got thrown in because by that point pretty much every territory in the frontier had become a state and nobody wanted this sliver of land just hangin’ out in the middle of everything.

Here’s the proposed state of Deseret. Pretty monstrously overlarge! The proposal was pretty damned ambitious considering the size of the would-be state, its wacky borders and the fact that it was trying to skip the queue by getting declared a state without ever first being a territory. And, um, the whole polygamy aspect probably didn’t help their cause much. This all went down before the railroad days and nobody really lived out here, so the Mormon settlers actually got away with playing like a real state for a couple years before the Utah territory was established. I guess instead of fighting for their own state or territory they just decided to take over the one that the government happened to make, and Mormonkind rule over Utah with an iron fist to this very day.

The awesome thing about Absaroka is that accounts of why it was cooked up are pretty spotty. Literally nobody knows why all eight of the people who live in the combined area of northern Wyoming and western South Dakota decided to get all uppity and be their own state. For all anyone knows this was either a group of well-meaning Republicans who had legitimate gripes with the more Democratic areas of their state legislature, or it could have been a bunch of drunken cowboys who got bored and just decided to play at politics like them city boys back east. The only thing anyone seems to be clear on is that everyone in Absaroka is a cattle rancher, and that was apparently their one main uniting force.

The story behind Superior is pretty simple: the folks living Michigan’s upper peninsula felt underrepresented. Which they are, naturally, considering there are so few of them. If Superior were to become a state it would be the least populous in the nation, coming in well under Wyoming. It would also be the state with the haughtiest and most arrogant name ever, which is probably why they came up with a backup idea: Octonagon. The benefit to naming the state Octonagon rather than Superior is it then becomes the natural place for the US’s first spaceport.

It’s the same story in California: the six or seven church’n’goat towns in rural northern California are huffy that their state legilsature pays more attention to the far more densely populated urban areas in the south. Which it does, and for good reason; if you’re the Governator and you have to worry about riots in Los Angeles or a couple of old white guys declaring themselves a state, the choice is pretty obvious. Their website was clearly thrown together on somebody’s lunch break. The story about them blocking off highways is true, though; they decided the best way to get the word about about how they started a new state would be to stop traffic and hand everyone brochures explaining what was going on. We’ll never know whether or not that strategy may have worked in the long-term but I’ll be honest when I say that I am automatically predisposed against any state that makes me sit in traffic to read propoganda.

The Republic of Lakotah wouldn’t be a US state, but it’s own autonomous nation. Right now it consists chiefly of Indian reservations, and honestly I think my favorite part about it might be the hilariously awkward shape it forces Nebraska into. My second favorite thing about it is that it consumes almost all of Absaroka. I like to imagine a parallel universe where Absaroka became a state, only to lose 80 years later when the land was ceded back to the Lakotah tribes.

I wasn’t kidding when I said the Lakotah website was totally sweet. They present their case in a very convincing way, stating the exact terms of the treaties the US government broke and keeping the main page updated with all sorts of tangentially-related news items (most of which is racially charged “damn the white man” propaganda, of course). My favorite part has to be the old wisened Indian man with his own YouTube channel; the internet is his campfire and we are his children, sitting around to listen.

Lakotah will probably never become independant, but look on the bright side: if it does, we get to have our very own third world country right here in North America!