New State Movements, 1900-2013

Authors

Nicholas Fox

Abstract

The separatist vision espoused by some State of Jefferson supporters is in no way a unique idea. Almost as long as there has been a United States there have been people who, feeling alienated from their host state governments, have sought to break away into smaller, more self-regulating political territories. In fact, the current State of Jefferson movement in northern California and southern Oregon is not even the first proposed “Jefferson” in the nation’s history. A region that would later become Colorado as well as parts of Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska was proposed as the Jefferson Territory as early as the 1850s. An area of Texas was also proposed as the State of Jefferson as early as the 1870s. These Jeffersons are by no means the only regions of the US that have sought to separate and form new states. A slew of regions have proposed secession from their state, territory, and national governments, including regions that have sought to secede so they could join other states, territories, or countries. This map displays new state movements, regions of existing states that have sought to become their own states, that have occurred in the US since 1900. Only regions for which adequate temporal and spatial data could be identified were included in this cartographic visualization. Names and data on the depicted movements were obtained from open-source websites.

Recommended Citation

Fox, Nicholas. 2022. "New State Movements, 1900-2013." Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 1 (36): 185-186. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55671/0160-4341.1209