Why do our states look the way they do? Mark Stein dug into America’s past to find answers.
By Jenny Price ’96
During seventh grade geography class, Mark Stein ’73 spent a lot of time studying a map of his home state of Maryland. One question always nagged him: why do we have Delaware?
To Stein, it looked more like Maryland’s missing piece than a separate state. He continued to ponder the mystery of state borders well past junior high school. During his years on the UW-Madison campus — where he earned degrees in English and psychology — the sight of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula connected to Wisconsin’s northern border made him wonder, “How’d Michigan get that?”
Stein went on to make his living as a playwright, with works produced Off Broadway and at theaters around the country, and as a screenwriter, with films including Housesitter, which starred Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. But a break in his movie career finally gave him the chance — and the push — to pursue the answers to those persistent questions about the shapes of states.
“I actually did pretty well in Hollywood, but not well enough to just retire,” Stein says, “so at some point it came together for me, ‘Why don’t I just pursue this thing that I’ve been so interested in — if nothing else, as a labor of love?’ And the more I looked … the more I discovered that, ‘Oh my god, you can even say something about Hawaii?’ ”
Stein’s book, fittingly titled How the States Got Their Shapes, explores why all fifty states and the District of Columbia look the way they do, often revealing some surprising answers (see facing page). “The further I got in, the more I was amazed to discover there was this splendid logic, and it was integral to what was happening in American history,” Stein says.
He had a secret weapon in his hunt for information: his wife, Arlene Balkansky ’74, who works for the Library of Congress. “She’d point me to areas, and then she was terrific if I found something that was in a book [there],” he says. “She had borrowing privileges, and I wouldn’t have to go in; she could bring books home, which was a great time-saver.”
Still, it was an arduous search. Stein devoted about four years to researching and writing the book, while continuing to work in theater. He started with basic histories of each state and followed up on any clues he found, leading to everything from surveyors’ notebooks to the personal diaries of John Quincy Adams. “A lot of times, it was detective work like that — just to find a name or a specific reference, and then chase that down,” he says.
Would establishing state boundaries be handled differently today? Stein doesn’t think so. Although the issues might be different, one aspect hasn’t changed. “Power is power,” he says, “and it will manifest itself whenever resources are at stake.”