I can definitely see the Mississippi River still, so I don't think it's watersheds. Unless they're using peaks and troughs both. I'm sure there's a term for it. My understanding of water shed is that it means everything that flows into a river so a river would be in the middle. So the borders of watersheds are more like mountains than rivers.
Nobody got time for that. But yeah this map seems to be more or less randomly generated, it messes with a lot of borders that are already geographically defined. Seems like they just made everything into an irregular shape and assumed people wouldn't look too closely.
US states were in large part created to reflect natural geographic divisions already. They were frequently drawn up on maps before having any significant population centers, so geographical boundaries were the primary focus. A secondary focus being equality, so not making any state too big or small relative to its neighbors.
100% agree. As an Oregonian, that border on the Willamette made me wanna cry. Literally no consideration of nature or people with that boundary, and yet it’s called a “natural border”.
I get why rivers and creeks and streams were historically convenient borders, but when we started building cities along them it got weird. Then some mf'er invented the bridge and it all went to hell.
As always Florida is Florida It’s a law of nature nothing before nor after can be Florida, Florida is eternal just like the geriatrics in there nursing homes.