93-7 The “Line of Highlands” That Wasn’t: Geological Attempts to Draw Boundary Lines through North American Disputed Territories

Session: Crossing Borders in the History and Philosophy of the Geosciences

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How did nineteenth century geologists respond to the challenge when diplomats negotiated international boundary treaty language with references to “mountain chains” in places that turned out not to conform to such imaginary topographical expectations? On at least two occasions, this problem cropped up, elevating tensions between the United States and Canada. Near its eastern terminus, the unsettled boundary dispute between these two countries flared up into the 1839 Aroostook “War.” It was eventually settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, but not before experienced North American geologists in the employ of both Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s government and the state of Maine went on the record with contradictory scientific publications touting the geological merits of their respective nations’ territorial claims. The essential problem for Maine, vis a vis New Brunswick and Quebec, lay in the original treaty’s allusions to a “line of highlands” that were supposed to parallel the southern shore of the St. Lawrence River. No such convenient linear mountain chain exists. A similarly imaginative 1825 reference to a nonexistent mountain chain (supposed to run parallel to Russian Alaska’s southeasterly Pacific Ocean shoreline) would continue to trouble U.S./Canada boundary relations until a legal tribunal settled that dispute in 1899.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-9105

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