4 Corners… but not really

So my standing at the point on my way to Telluride… in four states at the same time, was only real because… well, that’s the way things go… but not really…

Four Corners

The marker of the only location in the U.S. where the boundaries of four states meet was placed almost dead on in 1875, said Dave Doyle, chief geodetic surveyor for the National Geodetic Survey, which defines and manages a national coordinate system.

Still, Doyle said, the marker showing the intersection of Arizona, Colorado, NewMexico and Utah is just a relative smidgen east of where it should have been placed: 1,807.14 feet, to be exact. That’s about the length of six football fields.Besides, the measurement differences don’t matter anymore, Doyle said, because “the monument controls.”…

“Where the marker is now is accepted,” Doyle said. “Even if it’s 10 miles off, once it’s adopted by the states, which it has been, the numerical errors are irrelevant. It becomes the legal definition” of the Four Corners.

via Four Corners marker off the mark? Only slightly.