On a raw April day in 1996, Martha and I were returning home from the tourist spectacles of northern Arizona when we saw the sign for Four Corners Monument. While the cold wind howled, I performed the usual silly tourist poses.
Last week, I read that I actually missed the spot because, according to the National Geodetic Survey, the Four Corners marker isn’t on the four corners.
As one story put it, “The intended location was 109 degrees west longitude and 37 degrees north latitude. But, because of surveying errors, the popular tourist spot is a bit off,” about 1,800 feet west of where it should be.
That is, the monument sits at 109 degrees, 2 minutes and 39 seconds west latitude, rather than precisely 109 degrees.
But the current location is more accurate than the Geodetic Survey’s proposed location.
According to Article I of our state constitution, the southern boundary of Colorado is “the 37th parallel of north latitude” and the northern is “the 41st parallel of north latitude.”
However, our west boundary is not defined as the 109th meridian west of Greenwich, England, as the Geodetic Survey story purports. Instead, it’s the “32nd meridian of longitude west from Washington.”
That’s close to the 109th Meridian, but it’s not the same. For instance, the U.S. Capitol is at 77 0’27” west of Greenwich. Add 32 degrees to that, per our state constitution, and you’re at 109 0’27”, about half a mile from the 109 0’0″ where some say the marker is supposed to be.
If you start from the White House instead of the Capitol, our west boundary would be at 109 2’16”, close to the 109 2’39” where the Four Corners marker sits now.
Obviously, it matters where you start in Washington, which covers 61 square miles, and our state constitution just says “west from Washington.”
But where in Washington? A map revealed a promising landmark called the “Zero Milestone.” But it originated in 1919, 58 years after Colorado’s territorial boundaries were established, so it wasn’t relevant.
Then I read of the Jefferson Stone. Back in Thomas Jefferson’s day, every self-respecting nation had a “prime meridian” of its own, instead of relying on the Greenwich Meridian as we do now. President Jefferson had an American prime meridian surveyed in 1804, and the stone puts Washington’s meridian at 77 2’12” and thus our western border at 109 2’12”.
Though I would like to have Colorado thus connected to Thomas Jefferson, in 1850 the Washington Prime Meridian was moved to the center of the small dome of the old U.S. Naval Observatory (the area is now part of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery), then reckoned at 77 2’48” west of Greenwich.
That would put our western boundary within a few hundred feet of where the Four Corners Marker says it is now.
So despite what you hear from the Geodetic Survey these days, the Four Corners Marker is as close to where it should be as human skill could put it when it was first surveyed in 1868, long before there were lasers and GPS receivers.
In general, the courts have held that we should abide by those surveys (think of the confusion if we had to adjust boundaries with every improvement in technology), which means that legally, the Four Corners Marker is where four states come together.
Those early surveyors did make some mistakes — there are jogs in our southern and western borders — but they didn’t make the big mistake of presuming that 32 degrees west of Washington was the same as 109 degrees west of Greenwich.
I suspect that we will soon see a “clarification” from the Geodetic Survey, and we can feel better about our silly poses at the Four Corners Monument.
Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) of Salida is a freelance writer and history buff, and a frequent contributor to The Post.
