Whether it was the Aroostook War, the Klondike gold rush, or the infamous Pig War, the U.S. and Canada have had their share of contentious and bizarre border disputes over the last two centuries.
In 1859, the U.S. and British Canada nearly went to war — over a pig. The pig in question, a Berkshire boar living on San Juan Island, had been shot and killed by an American farmer outraged to find the pig rooting around his potato patch. The dispute over the slain pig quickly devolved into something much more serious, because both Britain, via the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the United States, via the Washington Territory, had laid claim to San Juan Island, an isolated outpost located in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, along the westernmost edge of the newly established U.S.-Canada border.
This dispute, dubbed the “Pig War,” involved presidents, generals, warships, and soldiers. And though it had just one casualty — the pig — it stands as one of many conflicts that have emerged between Canada and the U.S. over their shared border.
National Park ServiceThe American encampment on San Juan Island during the Pig War.
Many of these disputes emerged from the territory-grabbing confusion that followed the end of the Revolutionary War. North America had long been sliced into sections by the world’s colonial powers, with substantial portions belonging to both Great Britain and Spain. But following the American Revolution, a great territorial convulsion occurred across the continent. Claims by Spain and Britain — and France and Russia — shrank and swelled as the decades passed.
Meanwhile, ambiguous territorial boundaries that had been established after the Revolutionary War between the United States and British Canada were challenged as the former began to grow. In the northeast, this led to the Aroostook War in 1838, and in the northwest, it led to disputes over territory in Oregon in the 1840s — as well as the Pig War in the 1850s.
Further territorial developments — like the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867 — also led to confusion and debate over where exactly the Canadian-U.S. border was located. In this case, the debate over its location was further spurred by the Klondike gold rush, which sent tens of thousands of prospectors north in search of riches.
Far from being a new issue specific to our present moment, territorial disputes between Canada and the U.S. stretch back almost 200 years. In fact, conflicts over the border between Canada and the United States have existed since the borders were first drawn. Today we’ll discuss some of the areas of the border that have been disputed over the past two centuries — including some that are still disputed to this day.
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