Sunday, June 14, 2026

Question: Colorado looks like a perfect rectangle on a map, but it technically isn’t even close. How many sides does the state actually have?

Answer: 697. It’s not a true rectangle for two reasons. First, the earth is round: lines of longitude converge toward the poles, so the state’s borders sit slightly farther apart in the south, making its northern edge about 22 miles shorter than its southern one. Second, when surveyors went out in 1879 to mark the border on the ground, they were working with magnetic compasses and metal chains, not satellites, and they made lots of small errors. zigzags that were often “corrected” with abrupt jogs back toward the intended line. Add it all up and Colorado has 697 sides, technically making it a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon.