Meridian

1stGuideMeridianEast - theamericansurveyor.com

Surveyors dig up stone, Nebraska-Kansas history

By ALGIS J. LAUKAITIS / Lincoln Journal Star

As monuments go, the First Guide Meridian East stone is about as unsung as you can get. For one thing, nobody can find it — or see it. It's buried in the middle of an intersection on a remote county road on the Nebraska-Kansas stateline.

On March 19, 2005, a group of surveyors dug up the stone which marks the First Guide Meridian East. They found it in an intersection of a county road on the Nebraska-Kansas stateline. Members of the party were: Bill Wehling, Beatrice; Chris Witulski, Filley; Gene Thomsen, Lincoln; Steve Brosemer, Emporia, Kan.; Jerry Penry, Milford; David Doering, Beatrice; and Lynn Engle, Great Bend, Kan. (Courtesy photo)

The closest town is Summerfield, Kan., population 169, so there's not a lot of tourist traffic.

There's also the puzzling question: What is the First Guide Meridian East stone?

Most surveyors know the answer because the stone is like a navigational star in their universe.

It marks Nebraska's first north-south surveyed line, said Jerry Penry, a land surveyor for the Lancaster County Engineer's Office.

Surveyors used this line to establish all of the township and section lines, east to the Missouri River, north to the South Dakota border, and south into Kansas. Later, the line was used as a reference point for public land surveys to the west.

"Without it, you wouldn't have the land system we have today," Penry said.

Steve Brosemer, president of Geotech Inc., a land surveying firm in Emporia, Kan., agreed.

"This set into motion all of the landownership in the state of Kansas because the framework for all private ownership came from this survey ... that's true for both Kansas and Nebraska."

Penry, Brosemer and Gene Thomsen, a surveyor for the Nebraska Department of Roads, have been working for months to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the placing of the First Guide Meridian East stone on June 24.

They plan to place a brass cap on the stone and rebury it. They call it remonumenting. And they expect a couple of hundred people, mostly surveyors from Kansas and Nebraska, to show up for the event.

They've already done the groundwork for the ceremony. On March 19, Penry and six other surveyors found the stone and dug it up. They wanted to make sure it was there and check out its condition.

What they found was a rough limestone block that measured 30 inches tall, 22 inches wide and 6 inches thick. They also discovered that 18 inches of the stone was missing. It was supposed to be 48 inches tall.

"Originally, one third of it was on top of the ground," Penry said. "It was visible in 1855. I'm sure some Indians saw it and were curious about it."

Penry, a self-described history buff, said such markers were generally placed in road intersections and were subjected to a lot of traffic over the years. He theorized that part of the marker was lopped off by a road grader.

The stone was placed by Charles A. Manners, a U.S. deputy surveyor, on June 24, 1855.

At the time, both Nebraska and Kansas were territories and conducting a land survey was an essential first step to statehood. Hundreds of squatters were already pouring in to grab land. Many were northerners and southerners who vied for control of the territories as the country inched towards Civil War. In an effort to control the situation, the administration of President Franklin Pierce scrambled and ordered government land surveys.

In 1854, a U.S. deputy surveyor named John P. Johnson was given a contract to establish a base line for the two territories. This baseline would serve to establish the boundary between the two territories and would also serve as the launching point for further surveys.

During that same year, U.S. deputy surveyors Manners and Joseph Ledlie, were sent out to test the base line and survey a guide meridian north from Johnson's established base line. Manners went into the Nebraska territory and Ledlie went into the Kansas territory.

Modern-day surveyors and the public owe a debt of gratitude to Ledlie because after taking some measurements in the field he began to notice problems with some of Johnson's survey measurements.

According to a brief history compiled by Penry, Johnson literally missed the mark and placed the stone about 4,179 feet or nearly a mile south of where it should have been.

Penry wrote that "although Johnson was well-educated, his actual expertise in the field was very limited, and his knowledge of and familiarity with the solar compass was apparently non-existent."

Back then a solar compass (similar to a sextant on a tripod) was used by a surveyor to determine latitude and longitude, Brosemer said.

So what would have happened if Ledlie would not have discovered Johnson's mistake?

"The lines would have been a little crooked," Brosemer said. "Kansas would have been a little shorter north and south and Nebraska would have been a little longer."

Reach Algis J. Laukaitis at 473-7243 or alaukaitis@journalstar.com.

The Initial Point of the 1st Guide Meridian East was run before the 6th P.M. and was used as the initial Meridian for all of Kansas to the East. After determining this point, located between ranges 8 and 9 east, in Marshall County, Joseph Ledlie and Charles Manners parted company; Ledlie went south and Manners headed north to begin to run the parallels. For those in the eastern part of Kansas, the 1st Guide Meridian East is actually more significant than the 6th P.M. which is the primary guideline for the rest of Kansas.