Will the real Four Corners please stand up?

With pirates off the coast of Somalia and Obama returning from a Caribbean summit, why is Four Corners — that well-marked tourist spot where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet — generating controversy?

Earlier this week, it was reported that the Four Corners Monument – well-known to travelers who have posed for a picture while standing in four states — was 2.5 miles away from the point where the states actually meet.

How did this happen? First a writer at Salt Lake City’s Deseret News reported that the paper took readings by the National Geodetic Survey — a 202-year-old government agency you never heard of — and compared them with various GPS data and calculated the true spot to be 2.5 miles to the west.

Then the Associated Press picked up the story and sent it out to media everywhere, which prompted a Colorado TV news station 9news.com to do a story debunking the findings (”Four Corners Is in the Correct Spot, Mostly“), which prompted many calls seeking an explanation from Dave Doyle, chief geodetic surveyor at the NGS, who says the monument is only about 1,800 feet off the mark. (The Associated Press has since issued a correction.)

Doyle, whose agency provides a consistent set of coordinates from one end of the county to the other, seemed to enjoy fielding questions, starting with some tidbits about his agency (”We’re part of the oldest scientific agency in the federal government”) and then pointing out the original surveyor, C. Robbins, didn’t have access to cutting-edge tools in 1875 when he placed the marker.

“Nowadays, anybody can do this with a GPS,” Doyle says. But in those days latitude and longitude were difficult to chart accurately.

So Robbins was tasked with placing a marker on the western boundary of Colorado and the eastern boundary of Utah, which was defined legally as the 32nd meridian west of the meridian of the city of Washington (the Old Naval Observatory served as the benchmark). He did his best and made his marking, and in 1925 the Supreme Court made the point official.

And, believe it or not, that is that.

Because, as Doyle points out, “once the monument goes in the ground, the exact location of where it was planned to be is irrelevant.” So the court determined the current Four Corners as the legal point where the four states meet.

But purists can walk about 1,800 feet west to ensure they’ve covered all the bases.

– Mary Forgione, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: www.navajonationparks.org]

Permalink | E-mail | Print | Add to My Trips

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 9:42 pm by Mary Forgione and is filed under Arizona, New Mexico. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.