2011 Issue

14 court recognized that from 1868, when Darling ran andmarked the line of the 37th parallel, to 1919, when this suit was brought, a period of more than half a century, his line was recognized and acquiesced in, successively, as the boundary between the two Territories. The official corner position was determined by survey in 1875 by U.S. Surveyor Chandler Robbins. The four-way corner position was created by Act of Congress on February 24, 1863, which was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. The act extended the western boundary of the Colorado Territory southward between Arizona and NewMexico along the 32ndmeridian of longitude west of the Washington Meridian which bisected the old Naval Observatory dome in Washington, D.C. Robbins recognized the true longitude of the boundary, based 32 degrees west of theWashingtonMerid- ian, correspondedwith a longitude of 109 degrees 02minutes 59.25 seconds west of the Greenwich Prime Meridian. Robbins was in- structed to base his survey on the known longitude of the needle point of Ship Rock de- termined by the survey team con- ducting the U.S. Geographical sur- veys west of the 100 th Mer i d i an under the charge of First Lieutenant George Wheeler in 1874. Robbins triangulated a position west of Ship Rock, extended his line 11.6 miles west to the 32nd me- ridian, then ran north 21 miles and intersected the 37th parallel established by Darling. The corner position determined by Rob- bins was monumented with a seven-foot-tall sandstone marker at a position which has been faithfully perpetuated to this day. Robbins’ final position, according to today’s measurements with much advanced GPS technology, is reported as 36°59’56.31570” north latitude and 109°02’42.62076” west longitude using the North American Datum of 1983 (2007) of the National Spatial Reference System. Robbins’ position for the Four Corners Monu- ment reflects an astounding achievement, especially considering the instruments and technology available in such a remote setting nearly one and one-half centuries ago. An 1899 survey by Hubert Page and James Lentz re- covered the Rob- bins stone broken in pieces and re- habilitated it with a new stone pillar. The Page-Lentz stone was recov- ered in good state of preservation in 1915 by U.S. Sur- veyor Clayton R. Burt during the retracement of the boundary line between Utah and Colorado. On October 23, 1931, however, U.S. Surveyor Everett H. Kimmell found the Page-Lentz monument broken in four pieces with the lower end still firmly set in the ground. As Kimmell exca- vated the hole to rehabilitate the monument, he discovered an 8x6x5 inch memorial stone below the base marked 37°NL 32°WL and 1875 . Kimmell set a regulation U.S. General Land Office brass tablet set in a concrete monument, 14 ins. square at top, 28 ins. square at base, 56 ins. long, 38 ins. in the ground with a tablet set in concrete 40 inches below the ground surface. Connections were observed for the corner position by E.B. Latham of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1934 as 36°59’56.30” north latitude and 109°02’40.24” west longitude according to the North American Datum of 1927. The Bureau of LandManagement and the Bureau of Indian Affairs poured a concrete pad around the Kimmell monument in 1962. In 1992, a 200-square-foot plaza was constructed around the Kim- mell monument, which was officially replaced with a bronze disc by BLM Cadastral Surveyors Darryl Wilson and Jack Eaves. Over the years, a variety of minor upgrades and retrofits were made to the area surrounding the monument including the addition of plywood vendor booths for marketing Native American jewelry, art and pottery to the hundreds of daily visitors from around the Figure 2: At Four Corners; H.S. Poley, (1908) courtesy of Denver Public Library Figure 3: Ship Rock, NM Figure 4: Four Corners Monument circa 1930 Figure 5: Four Corners Monument circa 1992