If these states had come to be, we would have had states called Transylvania and Nickajack!
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Puerto Rico
The United States acquired the island of Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898, and it has been a U.S. territory ever since. While Puerto Ricans hold U.S. citizenship, they don’t enjoy the same civil and political rights—including representation in Congress—as those residing in the 50 states. Though the Puerto Rican statehood movement began soon after it became a territory, the island’s electorate didn’t vote on it until 1967. There have been seven referenda on statehood since then, the last being in November 2024, when 57% of voters indicated that they were in favor of becoming the 51st state. But ultimately, any changes to Puerto Rico’s status would need Congressional approval, something it has not yet received.
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Westsylvania
One of the proposed states that didn’t make the final 50 was the state of Westsylvania. The idea came up in 1776 during the American Revolution. The state would have been created from parts of modern-day Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. Unfortunately for all the hopeful Westylvanians, their bid was ignored by Congress and never went up for a vote. Congress chose to ignore the bid because they didn’t want to raise tensions between Pennsylvania and Virginia during the Revolutionary War, when it was vital that the country remain united against Great Britain. Westsylvania would have been the 14th state.
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Jefferson
The first attempt to make Jefferson a state took place in 1852 in northern California and southern Oregon. Residents in the area wanted to break off into their own state and even created their own flag. The next proposal came in the 1930s. In November 1941, a provisional government was elected with a local judge serving as the governor of Jefferson. The new governor was inaugurated on December 4, 1941. However, after the December 7, 1941, attacks on Pearl Harbor, the would-be state of Jefferson fell apart, as the U.S. began to unify when the country entered World War II.
The second group to propose a state of Jefferson was a community of miners in the Rocky Mountains in 1859. The idea was to make the Pikes Peak gold mining region into its own independent state. Geographically, Jefferson would have encompassed all of the current state of Colorado, as well as parts of present-day Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah and Kansas. But when the gold boom ended, so did interest in creating this state.
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Lincoln
The proposed state of Lincoln first emerged from a Congressional plan from 1869, which divided Texas along the Colorado River. The part south and west of the river was to be designated the state of Lincoln. But the proposal didn’t make it out of its congressional committee, and plans for the state of Lincoln didn’t go any further. Rather than create the state of Lincoln, a new plan came in 1870 calling for two territories that had the potential to become states: one east of the San Antonio River, and another west of the Colorado River. Ultimately, neither of these territories became states either.
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Absaroka
The state of Absaroka was proposed by a group of business and political leaders from Wyoming who were opposed to New Deal politics, believing that they were being left out. The rebels wanted to combine parts of South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming in order to gain self-determination. The state of Absaroka was first proposed in 1935 and named after the Crow Nation word meaning “children of the large-beaked bird.” The would-be separatists never actually presented the idea to Congress, but its citizens got very into it. They made Absaroka license plates and had a beauty pageant to crown a “Miss Absaroka.” But the dream didn’t last long. World War II soon became everyone’s focus, and the enthusiasm for the state faded into the background.
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Superior
This proposed state makes a lot of sense. So much sense, in fact, that it’s still debated today. The upper peninsula of Michigan wanted to split off into its own state of Superior (after Lake Superior) for around 150 years. The peninsula is isolated from the rest of the state and has its own unique culture. The people who live in the area are known as “Yoopers.” A bridge connecting the piece of land to Michigan wasn’t even built until the 1950s. Even though the proposed state of Superior might feel like a completely different world than Michigan, making it a state would make the Senate more un-democratic—with two senators representing very few people—so it’s most likely never going to happen.
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Transylvania
No, this state wasn’t proposed by Dracula. It was made up mostly of modern-day Kentucky and a small portion of northern Tennessee. In 1775, North Carolina judge and land speculator Richard Henderson claimed to have purchased a large tract of land from the Cherokee by way of his Transylvania Company, which he had formed to develop lands on the Trans-Appalachian frontier. Henderson’s attempts to make Transylvania the 14th colony failed because Virginia, North Carolina and the Continental Congress all refused to recognize it as an entity.
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Deseret
The proposed state of Deseret would have encompassed all of modern-day Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Southern California, as well as parts of Colorado and Oregon. Mormons proposed the state in hopes of being able to govern themselves. By July 1849, the Mormon community had convened a constitutional convention, drafted and adopted a constitution and began petitioning Congress for statehood for Deseret. Deseret’s constitution contained a provision stipulating that there would be no official state religion—even though in practice, it was the political arm of the Mormon religion in the area.
However, there was anti-Mormon bias in the culture at the time, and Congress wasn’t a fan of the new religion either. Also, slave states in the South were opposed to the creation of a new free state in the West. In 1851, the state was dissolved by the General Assembly and became part of Utah Territory. They tried to bring their petition for statehood back in 1856, 1862 and 1872, but it continued to fail.
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Franklin
Like several other places that almost became states, Franklin nearly became the 14th state. After the Revolutionary War, the land that is now eastern Tennessee tried to form its own government, declaring its independence in 1784. That same year, North Carolina had ceded this land to the government. Around the same time Franklin became a state, North Carolina reclaimed their land because they feared Congress would sell it to Spain or France to help pay war debts. The state of Franklin existed for four years, but in 1789 the leaders decided to rejoin North Carolina.
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Scott
The state of Scott was founded during the Civil War. When Tennessee became a Confederate state, Scott County seceded in order to support the Union. Tennessee didn’t do anything to stop them and basically forgot about Scott until its 125th birthday, in 1986. Scott requested readmission—even though the state was never recognized as independent by the government—and a party was held to welcome it back as a part of Tennessee.
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Nickajack
Similar to Scott, the proposed state of Nickajack wasn’t happy when the South tried to secede from the Union. The region of eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama tried to break away and form their own state to support the North. After many attempts to create the state legally with the government, it became too much of a risk for this region to leave the Confederacy, and they gave up on the idea.
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Sequoyah
In 1905, an Indigenous-led attempt to secure statehood for the Indian Territory resulted in the proposed state of Sequoyah—named after the famous Cherokee who had developed the Cherokee alphabet. The state was viewed as the next best thing to tribal sovereignty, where Indigenous Peoples could implement their ways of governing. But, at the time, Congress and the White House were controlled by Republicans who weren’t in favor of Indigenous Americans having their own state. Congress refused to consider the proposal, and Sequoyah didn’t become a state—instead, the proposed state of Sequoyah merged with the existing proposal for the state of Oklahoma.
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Sources:
- West Virginia Encyclopedia Online: “Westsylvania”
- Dave Hurst: “Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains: The First Frontier”
- Denver Public Library Special Collections and Archives: “Jefferson Territory: The Renegade State that Almost Replaced Colorado”
- New York Times: “California’s Far North Deplores ‘Tyranny’ of the Urban Majority”
- Jefferson Public Radio: “State of Jefferson”
- Texas State Historical Association: “The History of Texas Division Proposals”
- New York Times: “A State That Never Was in Wyoming”
- Smithsonian Magazine: “How the Great Depression Fueled a Grassroots Movement to Create a New State Called Absaroka”
- Mother Jones: “A 51st State In…Michigan?”
- North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: “Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company”
- Library of Congress: “The State of What?? U.S. States that Never Made the Cut”
- Smithsonian Magazine: “The True Story of the Short-Lived State of Franklin”
- Council on Foreign Relations: “Puerto Rico: A U.S. Territory in Crisis”
- New York Times: “Tennessee Readmits County That Seceded in the Civil War”
- Scott County, Tennessee: “Our History”
- Josephus Nelson Larned: The New Larned History for Ready Reference, Reading and Research: Volume 1”
- Oklahoma Historical Society: “Sequoyah Convention”
