State Boundary Monument

State Boundary Monument. (Utah, Idaho and Wyoming). The state boundaries of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming share one corner approximately 7.3 miles southwest from where you're standing. , Two corners were surveyed and marked in the 1870's. U.S. Astronomer and Surveyor Daniel G. Major and a party of 11 men surveyed the Idaho-Utah boundary during the summer of 1871. Using transits, chronometers, a sextant and steel measuring chains, Major projected a line northerly from Evanston to a point near the Bear River where a series of celestial observations were performed. A specified distance was measured westerly to the intersection of the 42nd Parallel of North Latitude with the 34th Degree of Longitude (west of Washington, D.C.), the place for the "Initial Point". The point was marked by a "glazed white earthen bottle" deposited beneath a set pine post and witnessed by inscribed boulders. , Three years later in 1874 while surveying the western boundary of Wyoming, U.S. Astronomer and Surveyor A.V. Richards found the "Major Monument" to be approximately 0.7 mile too far east, thereby creating a new point for there corner common to Idaho and Utah on the Wyoming boundary. Later surveys marked this point that became the accepted corner we recognize today. , A coordinated effort by local and government surveying organizations recently relocated the historic corner sites established more than a century ago. The original survey records were instrumental in relocating these historic sites.