If you were very bored one day and built a 3D model of the state of Connecticut, then ran your hand along the top, you’d get to a place, just north

The True Story of the Southwick Jog

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2024-11-24 03:30:04

If you were very bored one day and built a 3D model of the state of Connecticut, then ran your hand along the top, you’d get to a place, just north of the town of Granby, where your hand would fall into a strange little pocket. This is the “Southwick Jog,” a two-square-mile plot of land where an otherwise straight border between Connecticut and Massachusetts breaks and dips itself a little south.

Almost everyone living on either side of the Jog has a story to explain it. One legend says that the border dips because the Congamond Lakes on the land had to be given to Massachusetts since their source waters were further up in her territory. Another story goes that the surveyors who set the border were drunk the whole time; when they sobered up and realized they had laid the line too far north, they gave Massachusetts that little pocket to make up for the lost land, instead of re-surveying. A joke explanation given in Massachusetts is that the Jog is there to hold the commonwealth in place, lest it slide into the sea. Still other stories give reasons like complicated tax evasion schemes or bizarre royal feuds.

The real reason for existence of the Jog is at once much simpler and more complicated than any of the folk tales from the area. The story spans more than 150 years and five different border surveys, but starts with one lesson: Surveying is a job best left to professionals.