A Unique Place

There is one a very unique geographic place in the United States. It is the only place in the United States where 4 different states meet. It is called "Four Corners" and is the meeting point of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. There are plenty of places where 3 states come together, such as Texas/New Mexico/Oklahoma; Oklahoma/New Mexico/Colorado; Colorado/Nebraska/Wyoming; Nevada/Idaho/Oregon; New York/Vermont/Massachusetts; Indiana/Michigan/Ohio; Arizona/Nevada/California; New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania and plenty of others, but the Four Corners is unique.
  The Four Corners Monument lies in Apache County, Arizona; San Juan County, Utah; San Juan County, New Mexico and Montezuma County, Colorado.
 The Colorado side of the meeting point is on the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation and the other three sides are on the Navajo Indian Reservation.
  This unusual area has become quite a tourist attraction, attracting about 300,000 visitors annually. The last time I visited this area was in June, 2009, I have visited this area on at least a dozen other occasions. It is amusing to watch people posing for pictures in wildly contorted positions so they can be in 4 states at one time!
The Navajo Tribe operates a tribal park on their three sides of the monument. The Ute side is evidently not a tribal-government maintained park, but it is a popular tourist destination nevertheless. When I was approaching the Four Corners on my most recent visit, it was an odd sight to see a big crowd of people gathered in what otherwise is a forbidding desert locale. I saw the crowd of people from about a mile away!
  Recently, some of the luster has been taken off of this unique location because of published stories about errors made in the original survey of the boundary line. The stories state that the Four Corners Monument is not in the right place. The fact is, the monument is a little bit off, but so is nearly every other border in the United States that follows lines of latitude and longitude. The tri-point that marks the corner of New Mexico, Colorado and Oklahoma, which is supposed to be exactly on 37 degrees North Latitude, is actually
2 millimeters south of where it should be. Two millimeters! That is 2/3 of an inch! Surveying is not an exact science, but given the primitive nineteenth century surveying equipment that was used in establishing
 the Four Corners, I think the surveyor did an impeccable job. Furthermore, since the monument has been accepted by all 4 states involved and approved by the United States Congress, that makes it the legal meeting point of all 4 states.  State and Congressional approval trumps written descriptions of the border and this has always been the case.
  In the next installment of this blog, I will go into specifics about where the Four Corners Monument was intended to be and where it actually is.