The More You Know: Alabama is only 34 miles from Louisiana!

I have always loved maps, so I was drinking some coffee on the hotel balcony at the coast Sunday morning, watching the sunrise, perusing the O-T, and checking out some coastal maps. I knew the Louisiana barrier islands stretched out pretty far east, but I wanted to see how far. There is a point on a Chandeleur Island that is only 34.3 miles southwest of the westernmost tip of Dauphin Island.

Some reference points to consider:

- for perspective, a lot of people would perceive that Alabama is around 77.2 miles from Louisiana, which is the length of Interstate 10 through Mississippi.

- ignoring island distances (so mainland only), there is a linear distance of ~72 miles from where the Pearl River empties near Little Lake / Polecat Bend (LA-MS) to the eastern boundary of Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (AL-MS). I could find nothing shorter.

- the longest linear distance I could find was from near Angola, LA (LA-MS) to the tri-border point of TN-MS-AL (northwest of Muscle Shoals), ~340 miles








Bonus Fun Geography:
Reno, Nevada is further west than Los Angeles, California
Youngstown, Ohio is further east than Savannah, Georgia.