Parallel 36°30′ north
circle of latitude north of the Equator, historically significant as the line of the Missouri Compromise
The parallel 36°30′ north (pronounced 'thirty-six degrees and thirty arcminutes') is a circle of latitude that is 36+1⁄2 degrees north of the equator of the Earth. This parallel of latitude is particularly significant in the history of the United States as the line of the Missouri Compromise, which was used to divide the prospective slave and free states west of the Mississippi River, with the exception of Missouri, which is mostly north of this parallel. The line continues to hold cultural, economic, and political significance to this day; the Kinder Institute for Urban Research defines the Sun Belt as being all areas in the continental U.S. south of 36°30′N latitude.
In colonial America
The parallel was the Royal Colonial Boundary of 1665.
In the United States
In the United States, the parallel 36°30′ forms part of the boundary between Tennessee and Kentucky, in the region west of the Tennessee River and east of the Mississippi River. This parallel also forms part of the boundary between Missouri and Arkansas in the region west of the St. Francis River, and part of the boundary between the Oklahoma Panhandle and the Texas Panhandle. The rest of the boundaries between Virginia and North Carolina; between Virginia and Tennessee; and between Tennessee and Kentucky lie close to the parallel 36°30′. The boundary between Kentucky and Tennessee was defined as 36°30′, based on the Royal Colonial Boundary of 1665 that set the boundary of the Colony of Virginia and the Province of Carolina.
In 1779 and 1780, surveyors were sent to mark the line on the ground as far as the Tennessee River.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Parallel 36°30′ north” is circle of latitude north of the Equator, historically significant as the line of the Missouri Compromise. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Parallel, north and circle, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “circle of latitude north of the Equator, historically significant as the line of the Missouri Compromise” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5952511. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1665, 1779 and 1780.
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This entry incorporates text from “Parallel 36°30′ north” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.