Arizona-Utah Border – 37th Parallel Project

We’re going to travel, west to east, along the 37th parallel from Nevada’s eastern border to Four Corners, because that’s how Howard Carpenter ran his survey in 1901.

In our resurvey here, we’ll stop along the line, look east and west, taking stock of the landscape. Now, surveyors routinely assess the territory in which they place survey markers (called “monuments”), typically every mile. Tree species would be mentioned; the relative aridity might be assessed; soil would be classified, with a nod toward agricultural potential. In this way, surveyors built a plodding geographic catalog, mile after mile, of the landscape through which they diligently chained their way. And chain they did: a chain is a 66-foot length of 100 connected links, 80 chains to the mile. Howard B. Carpenter used two teams of chainmen (who actually used 66-foot tapes) would stretch their chain-length tapes 80 times per mile from one monument to the next, from the Nevada border to Four Corners, 22,166 times. He’d simply split any difference between the two sets of measurements every mile and establish the next monument at that point. Small errors were acceptable, according to Carpenter’s contract.

Now, we’re going to resurvey this landscape, chainlessly, occasionally finding surveyors’ monuments, with an eye on the landscape itself. First and foremost, borders are instruments of governmental artifice that permit land to be bought and sold, rented for cattle grazing or leased for mineral or petroleum exploitation. For the most part the abstract artifice of the line has little value except where barbed wire separates one herd— or pivot irrigator, or bureaucratic jurisdiction— from another. But we can take stock, as the original surveyors did, of the landscape with an eye toward understanding the land itself. Because a significant portion of the line crosses or abuts Indigenous nations, we must reflect on Indigenous legacies and respect the land that has always been a part of the lives of Indigenous peoples.

When contracted to survey the Arizona-Utah border, from Nevada to Four Corners, Howard B. Carpenter needed to establish a location on the correct meridian and then locate the 37th parallel. He started his survey in 1901 at Mile Zero, with a sandstone pillar he labeled the Initial Monument. That’s where the resurvey begins.