2011 Issue

13 T HE NATIONAL SOCIETY of Professional Surveyors (NSPS), at the urging of several of its members, spearheaded a project commemorating the history of the surveys that established the location of the only point in our nation where four states are joined. The Four Corners Monument is a bit of an anomaly located in a remote part of the Colorado Plateau, a high desert area with deep canyons carved through high mesas. The corner lies at the epicenter of a region framed by four sacred mountains which bring a sense of spiritual significance to the man-made intersection, a confluence so to speak; a confluence of four states and two nations, formed within one larger nation. The significance of the corner is obvious to the thousands of visitors each year who are drawn to witness the uniqueness of the place. Surveyor’s Story is Set in Stone John B. Stahl, PLS, CFeds There are times when opportunities arise to take part in something bigger than ourselves. The opportunities never seem to come at an opportune time, always seem to take more time than you can afford, and cost you more than you’re willing to spend. We can choose to let those opportunities slip away as missed, or we can commit ourselves to the cause in spite of the cost. Sleeping Ute Mountain, located on the northern edge of the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation in southwestern Colorado, rests as a sentinel familiar to the centu- ries of hunter-gatherer bands of Ancient Puebloans followed by the Diné, Ute and other indigenous people now living throughout the once unclaimed region. Spanish explorers passed within view of Ship Rock (Tsé Bit’a’í) as early as 1540 dur- ing their brief exploration and resulting claim to the land, as if the land waited for them alone to discover it, a claim not defeated until the Mexican war of inde- pendence in 1821. Mormon Pioneers, seeking religious seg- regation, settled beyond the reach of the Mexican and United States governments in July 1847. However, the newly claimed land was ceded to the U.S. by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo six months later. In 1849, the Mormons declared the bound- less region as part of their self-proclaimed State of Deseret and claimed jurisdiction over parts of what are now Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Ore- gon and Nevada, and extending westward to the Pacific Ocean in southern California. The Compromise of 1850 created, by five consecutive Acts of Congress, the State of California and the territories of Utah and New Mexico, establishing an east-west line of latitude dividing the free north from the slave south along the 37th parallel of latitude. The creation of the Colorado Ter- ritory in 1861 formed the intersection point which would become the common corner of four states after the Arizona Territory was created in 1863. U.S. Surveyor Ehud N. Darling surveyed the 37th parallel beginning at the north- east corner of New Mexico and extended a line 8,192 feet west of what is now the Four Corners monument. Darling’s line was challenged by a technically more precise running of the 37th parallel in 1903 by U.S. Surveyor Howard B. Carpenter. Carpenter reported that the Darling line had been run erroneously, and was instructed to reject Darling’s monuments by obliterating the markings on the stones and resetting them several hundred feet to the north. Carpenter’s survey was accepted by a joint resolution of Congress but was vetoed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. A 1919 lawsuit between the states of New Mexico and Colorado was brought before the Supreme Court of the United States to settle the boundary location. The court put the matter to rest in 1925 by soundly defeating Carpenter’s line which, taken as a whole, its effect, if established as the boundary, would be to transfer a large strip of territory fromColorado to NewMexico, including the greater portions of one town and two villages, and five post offices. The Figure 1: E.R. Warner Map 1940