Geography TikToker @uncovering_yt proved that everything we ever learned about basic geometry — and U.S. Geography —  are apparently all incorrect, explaining that though the Centennial State may look like a simple parallelogram, it’s a nearly 700-sided nightmare.


“Every map makes Colorado look like it has four sides, but in reality, Colorado actually has 697 sides,” he said.



The reason for the state’s bizarre shape? The Earth’s curvature. Land surveyors forgot to take the world’s spherical shape into account, a mistake that led to the state looking more trapezoidal than rectangular.


“In theory, Colorado was supposed to be a perfect rectangle but what Congress forgot that while lines of latitude never intersect, and remain parallel with each other, lines of longitude are not parallel and all converge at the North and South Poles,” he added, showing the state’s slanted scope on a broader world map.


@uncovering_yt I always thought Colorado just had four sides.. #colorado #maps #geography #unitedstates #america ♬ original sound - Uncovering_yt


With its southern border measuring 21 miles longer than its northern counterpart, this shape led to a whole host of problems when it came time to actually map out the state in 1861.


“When surveyors were assigned to follow these longitude and latitude lines to create the Colorado border, they didn’t take this into account and often steered off course” @uncovering_yt continued, noting these detours “were often a mile or even longer in distance.”


Considering the crew was “short on time,” they weren’t able to remap their past mistakes, instead making “steep corrections” to get back on track. With no time to remap their land, this series of errors ultimately led to the state’s strange jagged border.


But even with its messy boundaries, all’s well that ends well, even in the polygon from hell. To paraphrase commenter @mercedez_concepcion, it’s just a fancy rectangle.


“Living in Colorado, I can tell you it hasn’t made a difference in my life,” joked commenter @boilpeanut.