Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/352

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304
Lewis A. McArthur

southwest Jackson County it is about 5 mile north of the real line. In other places it is too far to the south.

The meridian boundary between Idaho and Oregon from the middle of the main channel of Snake River at the mouth of the Owyhee southward to the calculated position of the 42nd parallel, was surveyed and marked in 1868 under the direction of the general land office. The latitude of the north end of this line was determined from more than 300 sextant observations as 43° 48' 41" .1. The position for the south end was also determined from sextant observations. The measured length of the line was 124 miles 17.2 chains. The marks consisted of wooden posts, small stones, or mounds of stone.

In 1915 the United States coast and geodetic survey determined the geographic position of a point near the northern end of this line, about 10 miles south of Nyssa. The point is 43° 43' 21" .338 in latitude and 117° 01' 32" .699 in longitude, based on the 1927 North American datum. Additional triangulation was carried on along this boundary in 1934, and the longitude of various monuments was determined. The values in seconds were computed for three stations as follows: 31".96; 31".78; 32".290. These values are reasonably in accord with the value for the point near Nyssa, and it seems probable that this boundary line is fairly straight.

The north boundary of Nevada was surveyed in 1873 from an initial point on the Utah-Nevada line, whose latitude had been carefully determined in 1871, westward to a post set in 1868 for the northeast corner of California. The measured distance was 310 miles 48 chains. The marks placed on the line were mounds of earth, wooden posts, or small stones. This line passed the meridian boundary between Idaho and Oregon at 152 miles 72 chains from the northeast corner of Nevada and 4 chains south of the south terminal mark of the 1868 survey of the Oregon-Idaho boundary.

In 1934 the United States coast and geodetic survey determined the latitude of a general land office iron post on the Oregon-Nevada boundary just west of the Idaho line as 42° 0000".84. This seems to indicate that at this point at least, the boundary is very nearly on the correct line.

The corner post between Oregon, California and Nevada,