Have you ever wondered

  

Have you ever wondered why it's so easy to drive across Alabama on Interstate 10?  Most of Alabama is a normally-wide state, but it only takes an hour to drive across it along the Gulf Coast.  Look at the map.  Beachfront is always the prime property, but Alabama didn't get it.  Florida hogged it all.  Alabama got hosed!

 

 

You could look at this and figure "Well, Florida got there first.  They took the best part."  Understandable, but no.  That's not how this sad situation came to be.

 

According to Google, in the early 1800s, Georgia was a giant state including what are now Mississippi and Alabama.  Florida (and West Florida) belonged to Spain and spanned the Gulf Coast all the way to New Orleans.  New Orleans was already part of the U.S. as a result of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  The whole west end of then-Georgia was landlocked.  In 1812, the federal government got pissed at Georgia, and didn't like Spain being in West Florida either, so they marched down and claimed the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Mobile as part of the United States, and partitioned off three equally sized states out of the previously giant Georgia state.  There still wasn't much waterfront available for Mississippi and Alabama, but they split what was between the two new states.  Spain finally gave up Florida to the U.S. in 1821, but by then the state lines were already established, so the new state of Florida got to keep all that Gulf Coast!

 

Aren't you glad you asked?