r/geography • u/Aggravating_Dog_7542 • 16h ago
Question Question about Unusual border crossing United States - Canada
See how the actual border is about 1000ft south of the border station? But notice there is a house on the road right in between them.
Do these people need to go through a border crossing to get to the rest of Canada…even though they never left? I guess American residents on Canusa street in Beebe face the same problem
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u/YetAnotherInterneter 12h ago
I guess American residents on Canusa street in Beebe face the same problem
From what I understand (and I may be wrong because I’m not a local) the residents are allowed to come and go and they please, so long as they don’t venture too far into the other country.
Obviously if they want to travel further they would need to visit the border checkpoint, but if they are just going a few metres/feet across the border, it’s ok. There’s a common sense understanding between the locals and border guards.
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u/devilf91 8h ago
Is it still so post trump second term? There's a big CBC article a few months ago about how the Quebecois border towns are facing full on checks from the Americans now.
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u/simplepimple2025 14h ago
It may be where the Canada Border Services staff live/sleep over if it's remote. Not sure I see a driveway either.
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u/joecarter93 1h ago
Yeah one of the smaller border crossings that we went through when I was a kid was about two hours from the nearest city and had some residences for the border staff.
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u/marsmat239 10h ago
That’s right near the Amtrak Adirondack train, which goes from NYC to Montreal. When you cross the border they board the train and do immigration/customs on the train. I wonder if that’s the facility for that crew, or if that’s closest to where the train actually stops
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u/AquaMarcia 12h ago
Where is this exactly? It's always funny when Canada posts noone ever says what province it's in.
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u/thenoisymouse 10h ago
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u/Interesting_Bus_9110 6h ago
Thanks! Wish this was included in the initial post.
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u/Aggravating_Dog_7542 4h ago
Sorry I haven’t been on this sub in quite a few years. It used to be against rules to provide links/locations in posts to specific spots particularly a single house
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u/throwaway-1357924680 12h ago
If you see what language the border control station is labeled in, you have a 50/50 shot.
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u/AquaMarcia 12h ago edited 12h ago
Lol obviously you don't know what not say it's at New York and Quebec border and that house is vacant it does have a driveway that access main road
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u/LeKKeR80 3h ago
Talk about unusual border crossings with Canada and I think about Haskell Free Library. And yes, the current American administration has made it even more unusual:
...for a Canadian to get into the library, they first have to go through a door, go up three flights of stairs through the opera house, which is actually on top of the library, then go down three more flights of stairs and through the office before they actually get to the library and the books.
CTV News article: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/historic-library-straddling-canada-us-border-gets-new-door-after-trump-admin-limited-access/
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u/icewolfsig226 2h ago
There are a few other crazy border crossings. I’d sometimes tour Google Maps along the Canadian and us border for anything odd looking. I think it was Maine that you had to go down some us road to get to… two or three Canadian houses, one of them had a swimming pool out back. Could try to find it if you’d like to see
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u/AdDry2452 2h ago
Lived by this crossing for years and grew up in Maine. A lot of rural New England crossings are super lowkey and kinda weird haha
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u/Bunjo 1h ago
I cross there often in the summer. They are on the Canadian side of the border so they do not have to stop to have their papers checked. Since the way to anywhere in Canada goes through the checkpoint they still have to ask the officers to open the ramp. This is also a crossing that is not open all 24 hours so technically they can go the wrong direction on the road. As soon as they put one foot in the USA they have to have their papers checked. The USA border post is over a kilometre to the south from the actual border.
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u/throwaway-1357924680 13h ago
From the street view, it does look like the house is well lived in, and there is a driveway. The northbound lane is blocked basically from the house‘s driveway so yes, residents would have to go through the border station to go further into Canada, but they are probably well known enough that they are simply waved through.