Montana is Big, But Did You Know It’s THIS Big?
We all know Montana is a very, very, very, very large state. It's the 4th largest state by square mileage in the nation only behind Alaska, Texas and California.
It's so big, in fact, when I made the drive from Missoula to the Twin Cities, Minnesota it took roughly 17 hours total, but half of the drive is getting to the Montana-North Dakota border. Half of the drive is getting through Montana. It's ridiculously gigantic.
Before we reach the fact that rocked me to my core, here are a few other facts about the size of Montana.
- Beaverhead County is the largest county in Montana and is equal to the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut... COMBINED.
- Montana takes up the entire Mountain Time Zone. It is the only state in the nation that is exactly one time zone wide. Montana rolls from the Pacific Time Zone to the Central Time Zone.
- The Treasure State may be significant in size but there aren't a lot of people to fill up the borders. 46 counties have less than six people per mile and there are only 4 out of 56 counties have populations of 100 thousand.
Ok here's the main course. A Redditor shocked me with this all-time fun fact. Montana is so damn big that...
If you stand in the southeast corner of Montana, you are closer to Texas than you are to the Northwest corner of Montana. - Zombuca on Reddit
That... that can't be. Is that true?
I trekked the "as the crows fly" distance on Google Maps to find out if Texas is closer to the SW corner of Montana than the NW corner.
Sure enough, it is.
It takes 589 miles to reach Texas from the same exact spot that it takes 628 miles to reach the NW corner of Montana. Why is that so shocking to me? Is that shocking to you? Am I dumb for thinking this is incredible?
Related: Interesting fact: Montana town owns world record for extreme weather pattern
My little pea-sized brain can't fathom it.