The story of how our map came to have fifty states is an intriguing drama. However, the fifty states that make up the Union today are not the only areas of the map that have campaigned for statehood, their simply the successful ones. Dozens of other statehood proposals failed and some haven’t died yet. Some of the most famous failed statehood proposals are laughable others are actually not too ridiculous if you think about them. In this post, I will examine several of the most famous states that never became states.
One of the most famous non-states was proposed in 1785 by the residents of what was then western North Carolina and is now eastern Tennessee. The state of Franklin was in the running to become the fourteenth state in the young American nation. There was considerable support for Franklin statehood but the state’s namesake, Benjamin Franklin, was one of the many opponents of the state of Franklin. This ended up being a big deal. Franklin’s statehood proposal fell through and when the governor desperately appealed to Spain to support the non-state, the North Carolina militia came over and crushed the statehood movement. Nowadays, Franklin is part of Tennessee but even today, some folks declare that they live in the “State of Franklin”.
Another famous non-state was Forgottonia in western Illinois. Forgottonia was born out of the infrastructure revolution in the United States in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. While the majority of Illinois was developed by freeways and interstates, about a dozen counties in western Illionis were left untouched. The people of this region declared that they had been “forgotten” by their state and they seceded. They obviously never got their wish of statehood and also never got an interstate. Rural western Illinois, the old land of Forgottonia, is still forgotten and is bypassed by practically every traveler.
While Utah is considered the state with the most Mormons today, another state was proposed in the American Southwest that would have become a Mormon theocracy: Deseret. The proposed borders of the Mormon homeland included territory in Oregon, Idaho, Southern California, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Colorado as well as almost all of modern-day Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. This vast Mormon “empire” in the Southwest was hardly popular with the U.S. government in Washington D.C. Eventually, the state of Utah emerged from the vast territory claimed by Deseret.
Of course, some statehood proposals have been completely rejected. There was the state of Jefferson in northern California which is still on the radar (Six California’s referendum). Also, there are strong statehood movements in places like Puerto Rico, Washington D.C. (which is not a state and therefore cannot send voting representatives to Congress) and even Long Island which has threatened secession from New York. Although no one can be sure, there is a good chance that the United States won’t stop at 50. We can only make educated guesses as to the next statehood proposal.