Today was to be a nostalgia tour. First stop: Four Corners Monument. We were here in 1969. This was then a vacant dusty desert location with a plaque showing the intersection of four state borders: Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. I remember driving the VW bug (pulling the tent trailer) through all four states before parking. Rumor aside, this is the actual location of this famed intersection. But only by decree. It’s not where the original description said it should be. But Congress decided to use the old surveyor’s stone markers to define the borders, not the latitude and longitude lines in the original definition. The markers therefore have the borders zigzagging. The worst case is Colorado zigging a mile and a half into Utah. The four corners are only 1800 feet from where they were supposed to be, but a Supreme Court ruling establishes the current location as the legal four corners.
This is the line to enter the Four Corners Monument Navajo Tribal Park. The entrance fee is $8.00 per person. We left the line and skipped the obligatory photo of us in four states at one time. None of this was here in 1969.