CLARK COUNTY, Ill. — The last few minutes of sunlight flicker through the trees along the Wabash River bank.
Bob Colvin isn’t enamored with the scenery, at the moment. He’s bothered, but undeterred by mosquitoes that have just detected a rare appearance of humans in this remote spot, thick with woods, weeds, sand burs and grasshoppers. Colvin uses a golf tee to scrape moss and dirt from an engraved inscription on a stone marker.
Eventually, its message is revealed …
“159 MILES AND 46 CHAINS TO LAKE MICHIGAN.”
Colvin looks up and tells a newspaper reporter, “You’re looking at something very few people have seen — not in a long time, anyway.”
Maybe less than two dozen people in the past 185 years, he estimates.
Yes, one of Illinois’ most historic and relevant landmarks is also all but forgotten. The weathered monument, originally set in 1823, marks the beginning point of the straight, Illinois-Indiana state line. To the north, that border runs 159.359 miles to a far more visible monument in Chicago, just outside the gates of the Commonwealth Edison State Line Generating Plant. To the south, the Wabash River’s lower 200 miles divides the two states until its confluence with the Ohio River takes over that duty.
Now, surveyor groups in Indiana and Illinois want to protect the monument site. That happened at the border’s north end, where the Lake Michigan state line marker was restored and repositioned in 1988, and declared an official Chicago landmark in 2002. The 15-1/2-foot tall obelisk is that city’s oldest existing structure.
At the very least, the Indiana and Illinois surveyors want to set up a fence around the obscure southern state line marker. “It’s something that we want to get done, because we’d lost that point for years,” said Bob Church, executive director of the Illinois Professional Land Surveyors Association.
Near Dog Run Holler
The quest to rediscover that boundary point wasn’t exactly an Indiana Jones mission. Still, Colvin, a lifelong surveyor, ended decades of speculation of the stone’s survival when he literally stumbled onto it in December 1986.
“I was pretty thrilled the first time I found it,” the 61-year-old Colvin recalled last month, “because we weren’t even sure it still existed.”
Back then, his boss, Dale Francis — founder of the Paris, Ill.-based engineering and surveying firm Francis Associates, which Colvin now runs — told Bob he’d always been interested in locating that monument. So, while working on a different project, Colvin asked the locals at a Marshall, Ill., job site if they’d ever seen or heard of that boundary stone. He ended up talking with Emory Elliott, who ran a fishing shack near the Darwin Ferry.
Elliott didn’t know the stone’s exact location, but knew where it should be. The clue was a fence post near the river’s edge. Fishermen understood that post stood parallel to the state line, indicating to boating anglers the last point where an Indiana or Illinois fishing license was valid. Armed with Elliott’s information, Colvin went on an expedition to find the stone.
Reaching the target area, east of Marshall in Illinois and west of Prairieton in Indiana, is an adventure. Colvin, who’s visited the site numerous times in the past 22 years, still relies on highly detailed surveyor maps each time he goes back. On a return trip last month, he stopped his four-wheel-drive SUV at a rural Clark County crossroad to study the map.
“When we get to Dog Run Holler, we’re almost there,” he told a passenger, before laughing.
After winding through the countryside, Colvin reached a narrow dirt road and turned onto it. Until just a few weeks earlier, remnants of the June flood left that path impassible, and probably submerged the monument. In two spots, lingering mud holes proved tricky. Then it ends, giving way to a vast stretch of ground, covered with recently planted trees — a federal government set-aside land, Colvin explained. About a mile of walking followed until he found the general vicinity of the stone.
Tall weeds hid the marker, which was originally 5 feet, 6 inches tall, and 18 inches square, with a curved top. Annual flooding has piled up silt and leaves around it, so that only the top 2 feet remain exposed.
Finally, Colvin whistled when he relocated it last month.
On his initial search in ’86, the monument almost revealed itself to him. “I just was walking around [looking for it], and tripped over the dang thing,” Colvin remembered.
Stone holds mysteries
An act by the sixth Illinois General Assembly authorized Guy W. Smith to create and set “a hewn stone, of at least five feet in length and fifteen inches in diameter” and be placed on the line dividing the states as “it leaves the Wabash River,” according to a 1987 Tribune-Star story about Colvin’s rediscovery. As that legislature directed, “INDIANA” is inscribed on its east face, and “ILLINOIS” on its west side. Its north surface describes the distance, in surveyor terminology, to the northern border point: “159 MILES AND 46 CHAINS TO LAKE MICHIGAN.” Surveyors measured distances with chains, which are 66 feet long and include 100 links 7.92 inches in length.
The marker contains some mysterious oddities. Someone carved “E.G. 1939 NOV. 4” into its crown, apparently 69 years ago. And the stone’s original engraver, perhaps Smith, inexplicably etched the N’s and the D backward in “INDIANA.” Residue left by rising Wabash waters has accumulated around the stone, nearly covering some of its inscriptions.
A six-man search team in 1927 went looking for the state line stone, and they found it buried in mud. A year later, on Sept. 4, 1928, teams from Terre Haute and Paris reset the border monument, according to a 1987 recount by then-Vigo County Historian Dorothy Clark. They also set two new limestone reference markers, 15 feet to the south and north of the monument, to help future surveyors locate the spot. But river mud now threatens to overrun those 2-foot, 6-inch stones, and covers half their vertical “INDIANA” and “ILLINOIS” lettering.
Legal, historical significance
Preventing the site from disappearing is the goal of the Illinois surveyors and the Indiana Society of Professional Surveyors. They hope to erect a fence around the monument during a 2009 gathering of a national group — the Surveyors Historical Society. They hope to base that meeting in Marshall next June, if its newly restored Harlan Hall is available. During that rendezvous, they also plan to use modern global positioning system equipment to see how close the original 19th-century surveyors came to plotting an accurately straight north-south state line.
“Surveyors like to think we’re within an inch in a mile,” said Roger Wheatfill, administrator of the Surveyors Historical Society. “But in those days, they may have been off 30 feet. But it doesn’t matter.”
Those discrepancies wouldn’t matter because territorial law recognizes the original surveying markers and points as the legal borders, regardless of their flaws.
The state line stone near Marshall was set, most likely, due north of the old Indiana territory capitol building in Vincennes, Wheatfill said. Men plotting out Illinois and Indiana 185 years ago probably used an astronomic system, he added. They used fixed celestial points, such as the North Star, to set directional lines for state borders and townships.
The land west of the 13 original United States was plotted under a method devised by Thomas Jefferson, Church explained.
A monument such as the one on the secluded Wabash bank is a lasting reminder of that legacy.
“We’re just trying to make people aware of the history of the thing,” Wheatfill said.
Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.
Features
Related Photos
-
Jim Avelis
-
Submitted photo
Discussion
Rural Clark County marker official southern starting point of Indiana-Illinois line
- Features
-
-
Banks of the Wabash Festival kicks off
The 2013 Banks of the Wabash Festival, scheduled May 23 through June 1 in Fairbanks Park, celebrates 40 years along the banks of the Wabash River, 30 under the sponsorship of the Terre Haute Parks and Recreation Department.
-
Community Theatre concludes season with ‘Social Security’
Community Theatre of Terre Haute’s main stage season finale opens this Friday, with the hit Broadway comedy “Social Security,” directed by Sonni Crawford.
-
Bruce’s History Lessons: Morse’s telegraph and its impact as a ‘game changer’
This week (May 24) in 1844, Professor Samuel F.B. Morse sat in the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., surrounded by members of Congress, who had come to witness history.
-
Singer-songwriter Aly Tadros to perform at The Verve
Although she calls Brooklyn, N.Y., home, singer/songwriter Aly Tadros has spent the last decade traveling (and touring) across Egypt, Turkey, Canada, Mexico and nearly all of Europe in an attempt to coalesce the diversity that is being both Egyptian and Texan, both a performer and a songwriter. Next on her list is Terre Haute. Tadros will be playing at The Verve on Friday.
-
Longtime weatherman Jesse Walker relates well to people of Wabash Valley
While in middle and high school, Jesse Walker developed a strong interest in the weather. He thought about a career at the National Weather Service or at a storm prediction center, but the idea of becoming a television meteorologist never entered his mind.
-
CULINARY COURSES: Clabber Girl Classroom Kitchen provides variety of cooking courses for the Valley
There are a few taste-bud-tantalizing-perks for having America’s leading baking powder producer in your backyard. For nearly 120 years, Clabber Girl has been a staple in Terre Haute. In 1899, Hulman and Company began offering up what was to become one of the oldest brands in the country, Clabber baking powder. In 1923, the company changed the baking powder brand name to Clabber Girl.
-
RIVER OF SOUND: Composer sees symphony bring his musical imagination to life
David Watkins smiled as he stood on the Tilson Auditorium stage. The audience stood, too, applauding.
Two of his compositions had just been performed by the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra. Neither piece — “A Wabash Portrait” and “River Fanfare” — had been played publicly in decades. -
The Beauties of Spring: Stunning array of wildflowers bloom each spring in Collett Park
Groundskeepers put off the first mowing of Collett Park each spring.
Admirers of the place, Terre Haute’s oldest park, like it that way.
A stunning array of wildflowers covers the 21-acre lawn for a few short weeks. Those plants, known as “spring beauties,” emerge in March, bloom in April and go dormant by May, when the brilliant waves of white and pink flowers disappear. -
Day spent with daughter inspires Valley man to write children’s book for her
It started with a warm sunny blackberry picking outing, a bee buzzing, a little bird nest with eggs in it and a little girl begging her daddy for a night-time story. And from those ingredients the children’s book, “The Bee in the Blackberry Bush” came to fruition.
-
From kilts to haggis, Wabash Valley Scottish Society marks a decade of preserving heritage
As soon as Richard Cooper breaks into his Scottish accent, a smile automatically follows.
It happened last week as he recited a work of legendary Scotland poet Robert Burns. -
Witness to history: April movie chronicles Jackie Robinson’s trials as be breaks Major League Baseball’s color barrier — something Vigo County native Harry Taylor witnessed first hand
The upcoming movie “42” aims to show America what Jackie Robinson endured.
Harry Taylor witnessed it firsthand.
Robinson wore jersey No. 42 for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Taylor wore 41. Both were 28-year-old rookies, considerably older than most. Taylor got delayed by military service in World War II. Professional baseball’s unwritten but ironclad code of racial discrimination had kept Robinson and other African-Americans out of the majors since the 1880s. -
Sisterly Habits: Fillenwarth sisters are linked together in more than one sense
The Fillenwarth sisters are sisters in more than one sense of the word.
Both were born two of the eight children of city cop Henry and his wife Catherine Fillenwarth. Both grew up among a large and giving Catholic extended family in inner-city Indianapolis in the 1940s. -
Geocaching Indiana: Clay County man develops idea to use geo-art to create outline of state in caches
Indiana, long-known as the Crossroads of America, has for years been a destination for people coming from around the world to witness such activities as the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, Indianapolis Colts football games and Indiana University Hoosiers basketball games.
Since October 2012, Indiana’s attractions have come to include the surprising geo-art creation of a group of Wabash Valley geocachers — people who use Global Positioning Systems and similar location-sensitive devices to find hidden objects for fun. -
Voice of a Storyteller: Chance meeting of Twain, Paris youngster inspired narrative voice of Huck Finn
The block offers no hints of its place in American literary history.
Customers dodge raindrops, walking in and out of an auto parts store. -
Pearls of the Wabash: Efforts to reintroduce mussels
Broken bricks, shattered large clay tiles and thin strips of lumber nailed into a crimped piece of sheet metal, sit piled down a county road in Hillsdale.
-
Natural Habitat: Meet 17-year-old Ben Cvengros, who has a knack for capturing wildlife — in particular, birds — on his camera
I would like to introduce you to a 17-year-old Parke County teenager who has an incredible level of patience. Ben Cvengros was 12 years old when he found his passion for photography.
-
WORD PLAY: Scrabble Club broadens Greene County youngsters’ vocabularies and experiences in a fun way
Drew Helton nodded his head like a wise college professor dispensing scholarly advice.
-
Doing a lot with a little: Family’s resourcefulness leads it to reuse vegetable oil as fuel
Up a winding driveway, tucked off a main road in Clay County, sits an average-looking house in a hardwood forest. The homeowners, Chris and Lori Hart, are two resourceful people.
-
Coming full circle: Vigo County 4-H’er hopes donation of livestock auction money helps youth
The phrase “giving back” is often quoted but sometimes lacks personal follow through.
-
CRUISIN’ TO A CAREER IN MUSIC: Terre Haute native Will Foraker on a roll with new album, job as cruise ship entertainer
On his way to the Panama Canal, Will Foraker sounded energized.
-
YOUR GREEN VALLEY: Keep your garden — and yourself — safe from lead
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lead poisoning is the No. 1 preventable environmental cause of illness in children.
-
TRIED ‘N’ TRUE: Need something for the kids? Try these Ritzy Cookies
When we have dinners at the church, one of the ladies brings these cookies. Nancy Kahl has been making these for some time now. They are so good. Need something for your kids? Make sure that there isn’t any one who can’t have peanuts. These are so easy and extra good.
-
‘A Song for Indiana’ to raise money for Dresser sculpture
Art Spaces will present “A Song for Indiana – The Paul Dresser Project” at 5:30 p.m. on June 6 at the Holiday Inn of Terre Haute.
-
Sign up for Community School of the Arts classes
Summer is the perfect time to enroll children and teens in theater and visual arts and music classes at the Indiana State University Community School of the Arts.
-
FAMILY TIES: While searching for my grandfather, I found my mother
I remember the afternoon my mother received the chilling news from her nephew that her oldest sister and brother-in-law had been killed in a car/bus collision.
-
GRAPE SENSE: Same old whites getting you down? Try something different
If the same old Chardonnay, Riesling or Pinot Grigio is getting you down, try something different.
-
TRIED ‘N’ TRUE: A Rhubarb Nut Bread for the season
Last fall we went to the Covered Bridge Festival. Gene loves to go. Anyway, I got to talking to this lady, Treva Smith, at Bridgeton.
-
Diamond Hill Station goes bold in ‘Katy Bar the Door’ album
On the second track of Diamond Hill Station’s new CD, the band deftly rambles through a catchy, love-gone-wrong song called “Same Old Thing.”
-
Roxie Randle takes next step with single ‘Everything I’m Not’
The next step for singer-songwriter Roxie Randle is a single with the attitude and power to crack radio airplay lists.
-
Opening reception Friday for ‘Mud Musings’
Indiana State University’s Community School of the Arts is scheduled to host an opening reception for an art exhibition from 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday in the Gallery Lounge of ISU’s Hulman Memorial Student Union.
- More Features Headlines
-
Raw: Utah Teen Arrested in Death of His Brothers
Boy Scouts Decision "First Step" Say Activists
Raw: Heckler Interrupts Obama on Guantanamo
Raw: Jurors Deadlock on Jodi Arias Penalty
Obama Offers Drone Strike Defense
Sheriff: No Sign Killing of 2 Kids Was Planned
Johnson: Don't Blame Islam or UK Policy
Raw Video: Washington State Bridge Collapse
Boy Scouts Mom Supports Gay Inclusiveness
Closer Look at Okla. School Where Children Died
Raw: Scuffles in London After Hacking Death
A Slice of Apple History Up for Grabs
Raw: 80-Year-Old Climbs Mount Everest
Chain-Reaction School Bus Crash Injures About 50
Wash. State Man Arrested Following Ricin Scare
Two Suspects in Murder Known to London Police
Obama Defends Drone Strikes, With Limits
Britain Attack Believed Linked to Radical Islam
Oklahoma Family Reflects on Lost Son
Boy Scouts Approve Plan to Accept Gay Boys
AK-47-wielding thug may be the most bumbling crook ever
Oklahoma Survivors, Heroes Survey Damage
Trout's cycle a boost for Angels
Raw: New Video of Deadly Oklahoma Tornado
Kim Kardashian Flaunts Pregnant Bikini Body in Greece
NBA star pledges $1M to help tornado recovery
Shakira's Shocking Talent
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
GRAPHIC: Blood-Soaked Machete Killer Caught on Tape
Elin Nordegren Furious With Lindsey Vonn For Parading Kids in Public
Camera Captures Climber As He Loses Grip And Falls
Helen Mirren Meets with Dying Boy in Queen Elizabeth's Place
Crowd Chants '¡Si, Se Puede!' After Passage of Immigration Bill
DWTS Crowns a Winner
Police Ram House to End Hostage Standoff
Demi Moore a Rocks Bikini at Harry Morton's Family House
Anthony Weiner: I'm running for New York City mayor
Kate Middleton's Dress Flies Up
VIRAL: Baby makes epic soccer goal
The Hangover Baby All Grown Up
