Settling an Old Dispute

Settling an Old Dispute. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. , Near here the famed explorer Meriwether Lewis made a discovery that might have mattered more to the people of Kentucky and Tennessee than Lewis and Clark's first sighting of the Pacific Ocean in 1805. Both Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark came through Cumberland Gap on their way home, traveling separately. Lewis and Clark reported back to President Jefferson in Washington in the winter of 1806–07., Colonel Arthur Campbell of Kentucky asked Meriwether Lewis to use his sextant to find the true latitude near Cumberland Gap. This was supposed to settle a bitter dispute. For 27 years no one agreed where the Tennessee-Kentucky state line actually was. Both states said that it should be latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes north. But where exactly was that latitude here in these rugged mountains?, Lewis found that the old Walker survey had put the line in the wrong place, by almost 10 miles. Kentucky and Tennessee eventually worked out a compromise boundary, some 14 years later., November 23d, 1806, This day...I undertook to settle the latitude of...Walker's Line, formerly dividing the States of Virginia and North Carolina. The position selected...was near the habitation of a Mr. Walling, 200 yards south of said line, and about two miles distant from Cumberland Gap..., If...the Charters of the States of North Carolina and Virginia call for...36° 30’ North as a boundary between them, the line of Walker is nine miles and 1,077 yards North of its proper position. , – Captain Meriwether Lewis, letter to governor of Virginia, (caption) In 1779 the Virginia legislature asked Dr. Thomas Walker to lead a party to survey Virginia's southern boundary. At the same time, North Carolina appointed Colonel Richard Henderson to lead their team of surveyors to run the same 36° 30’ line west.