Over forty years ago, we stopped at the Four Corners National Monument on a family vacation, where I got to have one limb in each of the four states simultaneously. Well, it turns out that the plaque is off by two and a half miles. So all those tourists were in Colorado the whole time.
I’m not sure whether to blame George Bush, or Barack Obama.
I think you’re supposed to blame Rush Limbaugh.
No, this is change – definitely Obama’s fault!
Nope. George W. Bush is at fault.
T’was a windy day, when I tried balancing in all four states on one foot.
And now I learn that I didn’t. *sob*
Thanks, Rand! All that driving for nothing!
Damn it. I did the same thing back in the summer of 1970. Then I got carsick and threw up all over my brother.
This is non-news to anyone familiar with the subject.
Just about every state border wanders from the geographic line or definitiion it’s supposed to follow. Which is why there are border commissions, and borders are well marked. If the border commissions from both parties agree on the marked border, then that’s the border, even if it is found later that the surveyors were drunk and derelict in their duties, or bought by local landowners who wanted to be on a certain side. Even when a border doesn’t follow it’s description by accident, as appears to be in this case, it doesn’t matter. So if that’s were the line(s) were surveyed, and all the states involved agreed to it, then that’s the actual border.
The Utah-Arizona border does have a well known jog in it because of one of those buttes you see in John Ford/John Wayne westerns. Instead of going up and over, the surveryors went around, and did a lousy job of picking up the right latitude. Happened all the time in the 19th century.
In some cases, when the border doesn’t matter, it might never have been surveyed. (For example, parts of the Wyo.-Mont. border in Yellowstone NP, or the Pierce and Lewis County border in Mt.Rainier NP east of Nisqually Glacier. In both cases, the Federal jurisdiction and rough terrain makes an actual survey not worth the effort. ) That’s about the only case were a border can be argued over.
For those rare few who might actually care, check out USGS Professional Paper #909, “Boundaries of the United States and the Several States.”
Mr. Ortega,
You don’t understand… my whole experience of the event is now RUINED!
Raoul’s point also applies to the one-mile-off border between Georgia and Tennessee. If the border were where it was supposed to be, my mother-in-law’s Chattanooga home would be in Georgia.
The Wikipedia article on Four Corners (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Corners_Monument) states that the stories are missing the difference between the Prime Meridian and the Washington Meridian (which was actually used to define the boundaries of the states in question). It seems (to me, anyhow) a tad more credible than the AP story.
If you’re looking for someone to blame, Pierre L’Enfant might be a good fall guy.
Nope. It has to be George W. Bush’s fault. Everything is. Just ask the Malign Narcissist OTUS.
Obama did talk about change.
Oh MAN!!
I…have a…uh…friend…who got to, actually sneaked into the…uh… marker area, in the wee hours of the morning…and who…uh…took a wee, while running around the marker in a circle, so as to wee in all four states at once. I…HE…was just a drunk teenager!! Don’t judge me…HIM!!
Now it’s ruined for me…uh…him, yeah that’s the ticket a friend, no it was…uh. MY BROTHER, yeah that’s the ticket, my brother did it.
Morgan Fairchild was driving.
My wife most certainly was NOT driving.