Arizona / New Mexico / Colorado / Utah
June 2013
There are 61 sites in the United States we call “tri-state points.” These are places where three states come together at a single locus. Sixty-one tri-state points, but only one quadripoint, the exact spot where four states touch each other.
Four states in one spot at one time. Behold…
| southeast corner of Utah | southwest corner of Colorado |
| northeast corner of Arizona | northwest corner of New Mexico |
Officially, this place is named the Four Corners Monument. In addition to marking the spot where four states meet, it is also a point on the border between lands occupied by the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The original location marker was placed in 1912 and has been rebuilt several times. The Navajo maintain the monument and have only two restrictions to visit Four Corners. You may not cremate anyone on these lands and you may not be a dog. Otherwise you are welcome.
Our two lane highway covers vast distances, as highways in this part of the country do, making this turn and that. It’s not a particularly populated area. We pull into the driveway of the Four Corners Monument. For three bucks a head we buy the privilege of posing on the giant, round granite and brass marker, shopping for jewelry, crafts and traditional Navajo foods made by traditional Navajo artisans, and adding to our sunburn. This special place.
The monument itself contains benches and flags, two concrete viewing platforms with stairs and an access ramp ascending to the platform. Outside the perimeter of the monument are booths for crafts and food sales.
In the center of it all is the popular area where most tourists assume a back-facing-down crab posture, each appendage in a different state. Eventually the tush comes down, right on the highly polished metal marker indicating the exact place where the four states come together.
Except it isn’t. Like so many markers in the United States and throughout the world, this one is not geographically accurate. Surveyors originally mapped out this special spot, missing by about two and a half miles. It was later revealed that the original surveyors missed, not by 2.5 miles, but rather a more palatable 1800 feet, a bit over 1/3 of a mile. So originally, what they thought was wrong, was wrong, but they were wrong about that.
Once this goof was generally revealed concerning the exact location of the four corners, a spokesperson for the United States National Geodetic Survey admitted that the monument is, in fact, 1807 feet to the east of where the four-state point really is. What to do, what to do.
It’s a whole lot easier to change the maps than to move the monument, the USNGS expert reasoned, so all the maps were changed. Also, in a bit of a backwards compliment, this spokesperson praised the work of the original surveyors for doing such an impressively accurate job with the primitive tools of the time, which was around 1912. So basically guys, 1/3 of a mile, not bad, thank you. But you’re not even close.
My first visit to Four Corners was in 2009 which means I’ve been here twice. You could say I’ve been to Eight Corners.
From Four Corners, we drive exactly ten miles on 4 Corners Road to get back into New Mexico, which seems just a little superfluous because a few minutes ago, all we had to do was sneeze and we could be there.
