The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 or two years now, I have been getting my mail twice a week through a post office box in Point Roberts, Wash. Its 4.8 square miles are complete- ly cut off from the rest of the United States, accessible only through Canada. I finally visited this geographic anomaly recently with our locally hired, cleared American employee who normally makes the trip. During the 1840s and 1850s, Washington and London negotiated over where to draw the border between what were then “Oregon Country” and the British “Columbia District.” The U.S. proposed drawing the line at the 49th parallel, but Britain wanted to main- tain control over all of Vancouver Island, especially its main city, Victoria, which sits near the 48th parallel. Both sides finally agreed to draw the border at the 49th parallel all the way to the water, then drop down below Vancouver Island and head out to sea through the Juan de Fuca Straits. In the process, the southern tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula was cut off from what became British Columbia, remaining part of the United States. Point Roberts is 22 miles south of Vancouver, and on a good day you can get there from our consulate in 40 minutes. It’s not big — roughly two miles north to south and three miles east to west. Almost 1,500 people live there, and many workers commute in each day from the “Lower 48.” So how does the place survive economical- ly? In a word, Canada. On the day I traveled down from Vancouver, roughly 30 cars waited in line to cross the border. They were all Canadian residents heading south to pick up mail, buy cheap(er) gasoline or pick up groceries. A Booming Business Point Roberts is home to a few motels and restau- rants, one grocery store, one liquor store and several gas stations. It also boasts a U.S. post office and almost a dozen private mail outlets, all of which do a thriving busi- ness renting mailboxes and charging for package mailing and pickup. A steady stream of British Columbia resi- dents flows into Point Roberts daily to take advantage of U.S. domestic mailing rates. (Except for the post office, every commercial enterprise in Point Roberts readily accepts payment in Canadian currency, some at par.) The U.S. postmaster commutes daily from “the main- land,” making roughly a one-hour drive from Ferndale, Wash., across the U.S.-Canada border in Blaine, Wash., through several of Vancouver’s suburbs, and back across F O C U S O N T H E U . S . B O R D E R S A V ANCOUVER V IGNETTE G EOGRAPHIC ANOMALIES LIKE P OINT R OBERTS , W ASH ., UNDERSCORE THE NEED FOR FLEXIBILITY AND CREATIVE THINKING ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER . B Y L EWIS L UKENS F Lewis Lukens, an FSO since 1989, is consul general in Vancouver. He has previously served in Baghdad, Dublin, Sydney, Abidjan and Guangzhou, as well as in the State Department and the White House.