Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Okay, really, where is the Four Corners marker?


Now that the story about the Four Corners marker being mis-located by 2.5 miles has hit every newspaper and tv news show in the country, plus a gazillion blogs, there's been push-back from others who know the history. AP issued a correction late this afternoon:
  • In an April 20 story about the location of the Four Corners marker, The Associated Press erroneously reported that the monument is 2.5 miles west of where it should be. Instead, according to Dave Doyle of the National Geodetic Survey, the monument marking the intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah is about 1,807 feet east of where it should have been placed in 1875. Doyle says the monument's location has been legally adopted by all the states as the official corner.
Guess this means that all of us who were ready to head out to Arizona's eastern border to reclaim the 2.5 mile-wide strip back from New Mexico will now have to plan on defending a different strip from our neighbors possible attempts to steal it back. This assumes of course, that the surveyors did get some of the basics right on the maps and that really is New Mexico east of us and not some other state like New Jersey, or New Hampshire.

[Thanks to Ryan Randazzo, reporter at the Arizona Republic, for alerting me to the AP correction]

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7:10 PM

    Thanks for the laugh. I thought the original story was so bizarre that I decided to search the Web for some explanation.

    Elizabeth in Bisbee

    ReplyDelete