[Jonboy1983]

I thought Denver is located along the North Platte River, but I guess that's not a navigable body of water.

In any event, my hometown of Pittsburgh was close to ranking as one of these "extreme location" cities. Early maps showed PA has having a boundary along the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. Since I grew up south of the Mon river, then I would not have been a PA native had these rivers served as part of PA's southern and western boundary.

I do believe that many cities have the location they have because (as many others have posted on here) of their proximity to navigable water, and many of these waterways serve as boundaries.

The statement about capital cities being more centrally located makes sense. They don't want to have a state's government to be too heavily influenced by a single principal city (or vise versa). I do have a question about some of these cities. Lansing, MI and Harrisburg, PA are close to their respective state's most principal city. Is that because they were planned before the final boundaries were drawn? I know Pennsylvania's boundary used to be the Allegheny Mountains just west of Johnstown and Altoona, and Harrisburg became the state capital in 1812...