Monday, April 20, 2009

Government Mistake: Four Corners Monument Not Placed on the Four Corners


Here’s some useless trivia that proves the government can’t even mark the boundary of the states correctly. (So why would you want them providing you medical care?) For years, people got off the highway to take a picture of themselves at the four corners. The only place in the country that you could actually be in four states at one time—Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. It turns out the marker was placed 2.5 miles west of where it was supposed to be, so people were taking pictures of themselves in Arizona and Utah. 2.5 miles is a considerable distance considering the mistake. I could understand a few feet, but 2.5 miles? I wonder how many people woke up realizing they don't live in Colorado or New Mexico.

So the question of the day is how much stimulus money will it will take to fix this error? Maybe Obama will give us one of his feel-good press conferences to make us quickly forget his weekend fling with Hugo Chavez.

Posted by Bungalow Bill
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11 comments:

  1. change the borders to fit and all stays the same

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  2. Interesting point you raise there. I heard this story today and thought the same, who wants these jokesters providing health care. (Well heck for that matter just go wait in line at a Post Office for an hour some day, and see if you walk out thinking "Gosh, I'd love these guys to be my health care providers!"

    But the interesting point you raise is - 2.5 miles is pretty big, so chances are there are some folks who are actually living in a different state than what they thought. I wonder if they'll get hit with a bill for back taxes from their "new" state?

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  3. Must not have any Army Engineering, but SeaBees available.

    Seriously though, this is par for the course when it comes to having the government do anything, let along a liberal socialist government like Obama's.

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  4. It's the same government that landed a man on the moon (multiple times) and won 2 world wars. In the grand scheme of things, does this really matter? You trust the government to guard the borders and keep terrorists at bay -- or are you folks setting watches at home to protect yourselves? So it's a mistake. Anyone out there error-free? Sheesh.

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  5. You are giving the government way too much credit. Althought the government may have shared a vision, it was the efforts of individuals in this country that won both World Wars and the innovations of the free market helped America catch and supass the Soviets in the space race. The government would have dragged their feet in both of these efforts. In fact, when you look at every war since World War II, the government's influence has hurt the war. Shall I start with Harry Reid with the war in Iraq?

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  6. This is a bogus story:

    The original definition of the eastern boundary of Colorado is the "Thirty-second degree of longitude from Washington." (Reference: USGS Professional Paper 909 "/Boundaries of the United States and the Several States/", page 141). On page 3 of that reference you find "The Washington meridian passes through the center of the dome of the old Naval Observatory at 24th Street and Constitution Ave." The position of the Washington meridian is that station in the NGS database called OLD NAVAL OBSERVATORY DOME PIPE which has a current longitude of 77-03-04.89823. If you simply add 32 degrees, you get 109-03-04.89823 which differs from the longitude of the 4-Corners mark (109-02-42.62076) by only 550.818 m (1,807.14 ft) which is far shy of the 2.5 miles reported in the article. On page 4 of the that same USGS paper you find "Because of the difference between astronomic and geodetic values and the lack of precision in early surveys, a boundary referred to the Washington meridian" by even degrees may be several seconds in longitude from its position as defined in the enabling act." which I think says it all. While the original sandstone monument placed at this site in 1875 has been replaced, its original position was perpetuated by the Bureau of Land Management when they rededicated the site in October, 1992.

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  7. The monument is correct. It was not the intention of the great Public Land Surveys to establish lines of lat and long perfectly. The monument set created the legal position and is "king" over all other evidence. The NGS is not competent to discuss this issue. Surveyors have long known that all the state lines based on Lats or Longs do not precisely follow modern geographical coordinates. The real story is that the GIS industry continues to cause real pain to real people by pushing themselves into property issues they have no business involved with. In fact by even commenting on this issue the way he has, the offical with the NGS could be considered to be breaking the law against practing Land Surveying without a license. And if he somehow has a license, it should be revoked. GIS incompetence is happening all over the country, is a real problem and is what this story should be about.

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  8. Property/Section/State lines are established when the original surveyor places the monument in the ground. In fact courts have long dealt with this issue. There are 8 elements that define a property line beginning with a natural monument, next in line is an artifical monument set by a surveyor. Last in importance or number 8 is area. The area of a parcel of land is the least inportant for establishing a tract of land. Nowhere in these 8 elements forming the rules of construction are coordinates even allowed. So the coordinate of a monument is not a consideration. Nor should it be.

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  9. So what's the point of the mounument of the coordinates don't matter? That's the only true way to give people the delight of being in four states at once. Why else would you visit?

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  10. Physical monuments control over bearings, distances, and certainly over coordinates. Imaginary coordinate systems no matter how accurate they become are no subsitute for something that can been seen and touched. When the monument was set it "fixed" the state boundaries at that instant. From then on the boundaries of the four states intersected at that point and nowhere else. The original survey by law had to use the Washington Meridian as a basis. This places the monument a little over a 1/4 east of the 109th. A remarkable feat of navigation! Whats the "error" of the monument? 0.00'

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  11. Most all of the media reports about the Four Corners monument's location published in recent weeks are filled with errors, including the erroneous suggestion that NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is the source of the "discovery" of the monument's locational error.

    There is NO error, and NGS had NOTHING to do with these erroneous reports.

    NGS has published, on its Web site, an article outlining the real story. See it at:

    http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/INFO/fourcorners.shtml

    ReplyDelete

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