Oklahoma-Kansas Border – 37th Parallel Project

The southern border of Kansas was surveyed in 1857 by J. H. Clarke and Hugh Campbell, astronomers, and J. E. Weysse, surveyor, accompanied by 6 U.S. army companies to protect the surveying party from the Osages, Kiowas, and other local residents.

Three diaries of the survey document the experience of progressing methodically through an unknown and unspoiled landscape: Col. Johnston, the military leader, recorded logistics and encounters with Indigenous peoples; Hugh Campbell, with the title of Astronomical Computer, commented on the landscape and astronomical observations; and a 21-year-old Russian immigrant who’d enlisted as an infantryman, Eugene Bandel, documented daily troop movements and made observations about water quality and flora and fauna.

Unlike the surveys west of Oklahoma and Kansas, where the survey monuments are named by the mileposts they represent, the Oklahoma-Kansas markers are named (often) for local characters with significant connections to the place where the markers are located.