What about a very tall garden shed?

There’s a social media account called “Terrible Maps” which is exactly that: absurd maps, where the absurdity either comes from the weirdness of the information being mapped, or just plain meta-absurdity. Here is a version of the latter:

And here is a version of the former:

Now, I like the fact that this one doesn’t include the caption, because you’re probably wondering what on Earth Florida, Louisiana, and Illinois have in common. What could possibly group those three states, and no others?

Here, I’ll even provide a bit of quiz-show music to play while you think about it:

Give up?

Think altitude.

Got it yet?

The map depicts states where, if you stand atop that state’s tallest building, your elevation will be higher than if you stood on that state’s highest natural point. Apparently this is only true in these three states. Illinois is pretty obvious: the Sears Tower (Willis Tower? Something else? Nah, Sears Tower it is) is taller than “Charles Mound”, the state’s highest hill. Now, having driven through Illinois a lot, I found this a little surprising when I considered the hilly terrain along the state’s western side. But those hills are actually plateaus with valleys from the rivers and streams forming the Mississippi River watershed. And the southern part of Illinois is too far west to benefit, elevation-wise, from the Appalachians.

I didn’t look up Louisiana or Florida’s tallest buildings, but their natural high points are quite low: Driskill Mountain’s 535 feet and Britton Hill at 345 feet, respectively. Florida is so flat that I’ll bet there are a lot of buildings that reach a higher elevation than Britton Hill there. Even NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building is taller than that.

I would have thought there were more states that fit this bill, to be honest. Iowa, for example. It turns out that Iowa is short-changed (ha!) by the relative lack of height in the Des Moines skyline, but if Iowa wanted to join the other three here, it wouldn’t take much: one building in Des Moines just 86 feet or more taller than that city’s current tallest building would do it. (For the purposes of this post, I assume that meeting the challenge would involve the state’s biggest city. They could build a tower that tall in Mason City, after all…but that would be really weird.)

Could New York do it? Unlikely, as New York State’s highest point is a mountain in the Adirondacks that is more than 5300 feet high. Nobody’s building a mile-high building any time soon, I think.

So, just thinking about this, which states could do this most realistically? Well, I assume the entire Western seaboard is out; nobody in California, Oregon, or Washington is going to build a tower that gives greater elevation than Mts. Whitney, Hood, or Rainier, respectively. I thought maybe Massachusetts could do it, but it turns out that the western end of that state is more rugged than I remember (I haven’t been to Massachusetts in 28 years). How about Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware? Those are flat, aren’t they? Well, not really:

• Connecticut: Mt. Frissell, 2380 feet
• Rhode Island: Jerimoth Hill, 812 feet
• New Jersey: High Point (creatively named!), 1803 feet
• Delaware: Ebright Azimuth, 448 feet (rounded up)

The biggest cities of each are elevated as follows:

• Hartford, CT: 59 feet
• Providence, RI: 75 feet
• Newark, NJ: 30 feet
• Wilmington, DE: 92 feet

Well, it’s pretty obvious that Hartford is not going to be erecting a 2322-foot skyscraper anytime soon. Neither is Newark likely to build a 1774-foot building. But all Providence would need is a 738-foot building to get this job done (their current tallest building is 428 feet, so this would dominate the skyline). And looking things up, I wonder if Delaware actually does belong on this list! The base elevation is 92 feet, and their tallest building is 360 feet, which means that, assuming the base of 1201 North Market Street is at the 92-foot elevation mark, its roof must stand at 452 feet, a whole 4 feet higher than Ebright Azimuth. Hmmmm.

Now I’m wondering how much of this the Terrible Maps folks actually researched. I’m also wondering why I’ve spent so much time on this.

Share This Post