You can see the phenomenon pretty well in this satellite image. There’s even a town located within the sliver and it’s called Overstreet. Notice the tiny spike north of Beacon Hill. It offers several opportunities to experience the anomaly first-hand. A whole prong of Eastern Time exists west of Apalachicola and runs half way up to Panama City. The border between Central and Eastern Time gets really bizarre through the Florida Panhandle. …thence southeasterly along the west (southwest) lines of Taylor County and northeasterly along the east (southeast) line of Taylor County…Īnd now the best. Coburg would be a good starting point, just south of this remarkable spot. Taylor County swings down in a “V” shape, so a traveler driving through the lower part of the county into Adair County would find a surprise if he didn’t know the secret. Here the boundary between Central and Eastern Time also follows county lines.

Next we move onto Kentucky where once again the anomaly exists. “…to the west line of Ontonagon County, thence south along the west line of Ontonagon County to the north line of Gogebic County, thence southerly and easterly along the north line of Gogebic County to the west line of Iron County, thence north along the west line of Iron County to the north line of Iron County…” Multiple minor roads in the southeastern part of the county allow visitors to experience this phenomenon, driving due east into neighboring Iron County ( map). A little jog in lower Ontonagon County creates the time conundrum. Indeed, a large slice of the southern Upper Peninsula follows Central Time. Da Yoopers don’t think much of the rest of the state, in fact they often consider themselves a separate state It’s natural they might have more affinity with their Wisconsin neighbors in Central Time than someone hundreds of miles away in Detroit in Eastern Time. Focus on the town of Paulding which is right in the middle of it ( map). Then I found a better example in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. “.southerly along the Montana-North Dakota boundary to the Missouri River, thence southerly and easterly along the middle of that river to the midpoint of the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, thence southerly and easterly along the middle of the Yellowstone River to the north boundary… … thence south to the middle of the Little Missouri, thence easterly and northerly along the middle of that river to the midpoint of its confluence with the Missouri River…” No roads seem to cross the boundary at either anomaly so a visitor would have to conquer these on foot, or more properly, by kayak or canoe. Here the boundary between Mountain and Central Time follows the the Little Missouri River. The situation appears in a couple of spots south of the Arnegard/Watford City/Mandaree area ( map) and near the northern unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. You can always enjoy the pictures and ignore the text. It will either fascinate you or bore you to tears. I am going to quote directly from the Code below, so prepare yourself. Specifically we look to Subtitle A, Part 71. Those definitions occur in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations which relate to matters of transportation. States may chose to recognize Daylight Saving Time or not, but they cannot alter time zone boundaries. In the United States, the Federal government reserves the right to define time zones. The phenomenon happens in tiny pockets but it exists. In other words, exactly the opposite of what one would normally expect. While none of these are quite as extreme as the Idaho instance discussed in the last installment - although one comes pretty close - they all represent places where one can travel due East and have to turn a clock backwards rather than forward. So here I continue the effort with several more examples. I outlined a couple of odd time zone anomalies within the United States in Part I.

Wisconsin utc time zone