Why Chile Is So Long & So Thin: History of the Longest & Narrowest Country

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]You could fit the entire United States coastline inside one country and it would still have room left over.

[00:00:06]Chile stretches 2,670 miles from north to south, but averages just 110 miles wide.

[00:00:14]In the 1880s, Chile won the War of the Pacific against Bolivia and Peru, grabbing the northern deserts packed with valuable saltpeter and copper.

[00:00:23]Then they pushed south into Patagonia, claiming land from indigenous groups before Argentina could take it.

[00:00:30]The Andes Mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west created natural barriers that made expanding sideways nearly impossible, so Chile just kept growing longer instead of wider. Today it spans everything from the driest desert on Earth to Antarctic glaciers. Follow for more stories about how countries got their unusual shapes.