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Southwest 1 Boundary Stone

GPS Coordinates: 38.8012530, -77.0544000

Southwest 1 Boundary Stone

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Original Federal Boundary Stone
District of Columbia
Placed 1791 - 1792
Protected by Mt. Vernon Chapter
Daughters of the American Revolution
1916

Erected 1916 by Mount Vernon Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution.


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More about this marker:
This District of Columbia boundary stone is nowhere near today's District of Columbia. It marks the original boundary of the District before Alexandria County (now Arlington County) was retro-ceded back to Virginia.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Boundary Stones website:

1220 Wilkes Street; Alexandria, VA (Intersection of Payne and Wilkes Street)
Around 1904, the stone was moved 225 feet from its original position. When it was reset in the ground, it was rotated such that the sides of the stone marked "Virginia" and "Jurisdiction of the United States" no longer face their respective jurisdictions. The letters on the District face of the stone are smaller than those of the other stones and in a different script.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Boundary Stones website:

Early History

The Residence Act of July 16, 1790, as amended March 3, 1791, authorized President George Washington to select a 100-square-mile site for the national capital on the Potomac River between Alexandria, Virginia, and Williamsport, Maryland. President Washington selected the southernmost location within these limits so that the capital would include all of present-day Old Town Alexandria, then one of the busiest ports in the country. Acting on instructions from Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Major Andrew Ellicott began his initial observations for a rough survey of the ten-mile square on Friday, February 11, 1791.

Ellicott, a prominent professional surveyor, hired Benjamin Banneker, an astronomer and surveyor from Maryland, to make the astronomical observations and calculations necessary to establish the south corner of the square at Jones Point in Alexandria. According to legend, "Banneker fixed the position of the first stone by lying on his back to find the exact starting point for the survey ... and plotting six stars as they crossed his spot at a particular time of night." From there, Ellicott's team embarked on a forty-mile journey, surveying ten-mile lines first along the southwest line, then along The northwest line, next along the northeast line, and finally along the southeast line. The team completed this rough survey in April 1791.

On April 15, 1791, the Alexandria Masonic Lodge placed a small stone at the south corner at Jones Point in ceremonies attended by Ellicott, federal district commissioners Daniel Carroll and David Stuart, and other dignitaries. George Washington did not attend the ceremony, although he did visit the site the prior month. Newpapers around the country announced the story of the beginning of the new federal city. (In 1794, the ceremonial stone at Jones Point was replaced by a large stone, still in place today, with the inscription "The beginning of the Territory of Columbia" on one side.)

Ellicott's team, minus Banneker, who left after the placement of the south stone, then began the formal survey by clearing twenty feet of land on both sides of each boundary line and placing other stones, made of Aquia Creek sandstone, at one-mile intervals. On each stone, the side facing the District of Columbia displayed the inscription "Jurisdiction of the United States" and a mile number. The opposite side said either "Virginia" or "Maryland," as appropriate. The third and fourth sides displayed the year in which the stone was placed (1791 for the 14 Virginia stones and 1792 for the 26 Maryland stones) and the magnetic compass variance at that place. Stones along the northwest Maryland boundary also displayed the number of miles they fell from NW4, the first stone placed in Maryland. Stones placed at intervals other than a full mile listed their distances partially in miles and partially in poles.

The boundary stones are the oldest federal monuments. Although several stones have been moved or severely damaged, thirty-six stones from the 1790s are in or near their original locations, including all fourteen in the land that was returned to Virginia in the 1846-1847 retrocession. Three other locations have substitute stones (SW2, SE4, and SE8), and one location (NE1) is marked only by a plaque. This site describes the locations of the stones as of 2016, updating the information provided by the Daughters of the American Revolution (1976) and the National Register of Historic Places (1996).

Growing Public Interest

After Ellicott's team, the next to survey the stones was Marcus Baker, who visited each stone's location during the summer of 1894. Baker reported his survey to the Columbia Historical Society. Following Baker, Fred E. Woodward photographed thirty-nine of the boundary stones--all but SW2, which had been lost even before Baker's survey--starting in 1905. In his reports to the Columbia Historical Society (published in 1907, 1908, and 1915) and in public presentations, Woodward described the extent to which the stones had deteriorated and proposed that they be protected for the enjoyment of future generations. Ernest A. Shuster, Jr., followed in Woodward's footsteps soon after with his own impressive photo collection and article.

In 1915, the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DCDAR), citing Woodward's work, voluntarily assumed the responsibility of protecting the stones by erecting a tall iron fence around each one. For decades afterward, DCDAR members visited the stones periodically to perform routine maintenance. Despite DCDAR's care and attention, many of the stones fell on hard times during the mid-1900s, as documented by Kenneth Lawrence, who updated the work of Baker and Woodward after visiting all of the stones during the summer of 1949. Several stones were repositioned, removed, lost, or buried during construction projects over the years.

Restoration Efforts and NACABOSTCO

In 1978, Kevin Wood of Boy Scout Troop 98 led a service project that visited most of the stones to clean up the sites and repaint the fences. As Mr. Wood explained in 2012,

"It was a fun project which we did over three or four days, All the Virginia ones one day, All Anacostia another. And I am pretty sure we did the top half of the city over two days. The green paint came from the DC parks department; my dad called them and set it up. An older parks employee came by the house one day with the paint and he and I drove around the city, to show me where the stones were. He seemed to be pretty enthusiastic about it, he showed me Southeast 9 and the one in Kenilworth Gardens. I am pretty sure he even took me across the bridge to the one at the southern tip of DC, but not the VA ones. So we sort of had permission to do the ones in DC. In VA we hadn't contacted anybody. If the stone was in a public place or a park, VA fences got a coat of green DC paint too. In some cases the stones, in VA, DC and MD were on lawns and cared for and we didn't do anything. We always rang the doorbells and talked to the people and asked if they wanted us to paint the fences. I think they always or almost always said no. Usually they had them painted black. Sometimes we clipped the weeds ad the hedges on private property, I think we did this for one on Eastern Avenue inside of a chan link fence surrounded by hedges. The only stone we didn't actually get to see was one in a backyard in VA, the first or second on the northern stretch. The woman of the house was very firm about not allowing us to see it."

In 1990 and 1991, a resurveying team led by David Doyle to celebrate the District's bicentennial located two missing stones. In September 1995, the Northern Virginia Boundary Stones Committee (NOVABOSTCO), under the leadership of chairman Ric Terman, issued a 77-page report on the status of the fourteen stones in Virginia. NOVABOSTCO's successor, the Nation's Capital Boundary Stones Committee (NACABOSTCO), chaired first by Terman and later by Stephen Powers, has worked since 2000 to ensure the preservation and appreciation of all of the stones, partnering with DCDAR, the American Society of Civil Engineers - National Capital Section (ASCE-NCS), the District of Columbia Association of Land Surveyers, and other government agencies, historical societies, and professional associations. As part of that effort, Gayle T. Harris inventoried DCDAR's extensive holdings in 2001. BoundaryStones.org followed in April 2006.

Since 2010, ASCE-NCS has led restoration projects that pick up where Troop 98 left off. In 2015 and 2016, the District Department of Transportation and National Park Service worked together to protect the east and north corner stones and place replica stones for SE4 and SE8.


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Here follows an excerpt from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The boundary markers of the original District of Columbia are the 40 milestones that marked the four lines forming the boundaries between the states of Maryland and Virginia and the square of 100 square miles (259 km2) of federal territory that became the District of Columbia in 1801 (see: Founding of the District of Columbia). Working under the supervision of three commissioners that President George Washington had appointed in 1790 in accordance with the federal Residence Act, a surveying team led by Major Andrew Ellicott placed these markers in 1791 and 1792. Among Ellicott's assistants were his brothers Joseph and Benjamin Ellicott, Isaac Roberdeau, George Fenwick, Isaac Briggs and an African American astronomer, Benjamin Banneker.[1]

Today, 36 of the original marker stones survive as the oldest federally placed monuments in the United States. Thirteen of these markers are now within Virginia due to the return of the portion of the District south and west of the Potomac River to Virginia in 1846 (see: District of Columbia retrocession).

Geography
The District of Columbia (initially, the Territory of Columbia) was originally specified to be a square 100 square miles (260 km2) in area, with the axes between the corners of the square running north-south and east-west, The square had its southern corner at the southern tip of Jones Point in Alexandria, Virginia, at the confluence of the Potomac River and Hunting Creek (later the site of the Jones Point Lighthouse).[2] The sides of the square were each 10 miles (16 km) long. The specified orientation results in a diamond shape for the District's original boundaries on most maps.

The north-south axis of the District's current boundaries extends southward from the District's north corner near East-West Highway (Maryland Route 410), travels between 17th and 18th Streets, N.W., and continues south across the National Mall to the far shore of the Potomac River; the east-west axis is between the present Constitution Avenue and C Street, N.E. and N.W.[3]

These axes are not the lines used to define the four geographical quadrants of the District (N.E., N.W., S.E., and S.W.), commonly appended to Washington street addresses, which are delimited generally by North Capitol Street, East Capitol Street, South Capitol Street, and the National Mall. The center of the square is west of the Ellipse and north of the Mall, within the grounds of the headquarters of the Organization of American States.[4]

In 2011, the District of Columbia geographic information system (GIS) program completed a project to map the District's boundary using Global Positioning System (GPS) and contemporary survey technology at an accuracy of ±5 centimetres (2.0 in) horizontally and ±9 centimetres (3.5 in) vertically. The GIS program's survey found that (listed in the order in which Andrew Ellicott's team performed the initial boundary survey):

Along the northwest boundary, the stones are outside the existing boundary ranging from 4.43 feet (1.35 m) to 9.6 feet (2.93 m)
Along the northeast boundary, the stones are inside the existing boundary ranging from 6.6 feet (2.01 m) to 8.4 feet (2.56 m)
Along the southeast boundary, the stones are outside the existing boundary ranging from 12.75 feet (3.89 m) to 18.48 feet (5.63 m)
The overall accuracy of the historic survey and the survey using 2011 technology produced remarkably similar results. For example, the distance between Southeast stones numbers 6 and 7 is 5,280.824 feet (1,609.5952 m), almost exactly one mile (5,280 feet (1,609.3440 m)).[5]

The stones are located alongside streets, in public parks, deep in the woods and on personal property. Homeowners with stones on their property are generally willing to let the curious take a closer look if they are respectful.[6]

Placement of the boundary stones
On March 30, 1791, President George Washington issued a proclamation that established ″Jones's point, the upper cape of Hunting Creek in Virginia″ as the starting point for the federal territory's boundary survey.[7] Acting in accordance with instructions in the proclamation, the survey team then began its work at the square's south corner on the shoreline of the point, which was at the southeast corner of Alexandria, Virginia.[2][8][9] On April 15, 1791, officials dedicated the south corner stone in an elaborate Masonic ceremony at a point that Andrew Ellicott had determined.[2][10][11]

The survey team then cleared a corridor along the boundary route to facilitate surveying, traveling clockwise from the point and placing sandstone boundary markers at the four corners and at intervals of approximately one mile.[2][8] The markers were quarried near Aquia Creek in Virginia.[2] Most weighed about a half-ton at their emplacement; the four cornerstones were slightly larger. The Virginia stones were set in 1791, and the Maryland ones in 1792.[2] The map on the web page "Boundary Stones of the District of Columbia" identifies the location of each of the four corner stones, and those of the still-in-place intermediate stones.[12]

The side of a boundary marker that faced the federal territory was inscribed "Jurisdiction of the United States" and with the distance in miles and poles from the previous corner stone. The opposite side was marked with the name of the border state: Virginia or Maryland. The remaining sides were marked with the year that the team placed the stones and with the variation ("Var.") of the compass needle at that place.[2][13][14]

On January 1, 1793, Andrew Ellicott submitted to the commissioners a report that stated that the boundary survey had been completed and that all of the boundary marker stones had been set in place. Ellicott's report described the marker stones and contained a map that showed the boundaries and topographical features of the Territory of Columbia. The map identified the locations within the Territory of the planned City of Washington and its major streets, as well as the location of each boundary marker stone.[2][15]

Protection and historical designations
Protection
In 1906, Fred E. Woodward read a paper to the Columbia Historical Society that described the history, location and conditions of each of the remaining boundary stones, together with photographs of each. His paper concluded by recommending that the stones be protected by placing small fences around each one.[16] In 1909, Ernest A. Shuster of the United States Geological Survey wrote an article for the National Geographic Magazine that described his visits to the 36 remaining boundary stones and that urged their protection and preservation.[17]

In 1915, various local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) began to place fences around each of the markers.[2][10][12] The DAR also placed at the exact center of the original federal territory a marker stone that was located about a half of a mile from the White House and was near the DAR's Memorial Continental Hall.[10]

Historical designations
One Virginia boundary marker was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and another in 1980. In 1991, the remaining Virginia boundary markers were added to the National Register in response to a Multiple Property Submission that the Virginia DAR had submitted.[18] In 1996, 23 marker stones along the boundary between the District of Columbia and Maryland were added to the National Register in response to registration forms that the District of Columbia government had submitted for each of the stones. Each of the District's registration forms referenced the documentation in the Multiple Property Submission for the Virginia markers.[19][20]

Virginia
Southwest 9.[21] This boundary marker in Falls Church, Virginia was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and further was named a U.S. National Historic Landmark, in 1976 at the instigation of the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation, which gave the stone its name: Benjamin Banneker: SW-9 Intermediate Boundary Stone.[22] It was the first of the boundary markers to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

South Corner.[23] This boundary marker in Virginia was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, together with Alexandria's Jones Point Lighthouse. In 1794, the marker replaced the marker that officials had dedicated during the 1791 Masonic ceremony.[24]

Southwest 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8; West Corner; Northwest 1, 2, and 3. These boundary markers in Virginia were added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 1991 in response to the Multiple Property Submission cited above.[18]

District of Columbia and Maryland
Northwest 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9; North Corner; Northeast 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9; East Corner; Southeast 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9. These boundary markers, located along the border between the District of Columbia and Maryland, were added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 1, 1996.[19][25]

Preservation efforts
In 1976, the National Capital Planning Commission published a report that described the history and condition of each boundary stone.[2] The report recommended that measures be taken to assure the stones' preservation.[2] In 1990 and 1991, a resurveying team to celebrate the boundary markers' bicentennial located two of the then-missing stones.[12]

In 1995, the Northern Virginia Boundary Stones Committee, whose establishment the Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC) had requested, issued a list of recommendations intended to document and preserve the 14 boundary stones that were located in Virginia. The Committee included representatives of the State of Maryland and of Arlington and Fairfax counties and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church in Virginia.[26]

In 2008, the NVRC announced that four Virginia local governments, including Arlington and Fairfax counties and the cities of Alexandria and Falls Church, had agreed to help fund a project to protect and preserve the boundary stones by providing matching funds to a Transportation Enhancement Grant that the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) had received from the Federal Highway Administration (FHA). The announcement stated that the NVRC was working on an agreement with the DDOT, the National Park Service and the FHA to administer the project.[27]

However, the preservation project had not yet begun by 2012. It appeared that the DDOT no longer had the funds that had been allocated for the project.[28] In the meantime, teams of volunteers had begun to landscape and repaint the fences surrounding the stones.[29] In addition, the District of Columbia DAR restored the Northeast No. 7 boundary marker and its fence in 2012.

In 2014, the National Park Service, the historic preservation staff of the District of Columbia Office of Planning, the DDOT and the DAR initiated an effort to rehabilitate the boundary markers that were located along the District's contemporary boundaries.[30] As part of the project, in January 2015 a DDOT crew unearthed a stone buried in 1962 that had replaced Southeast No. 8, with the intention of cleaning and restoring the marker.[31] However, in 2016, the stone was replaced by a new stone that presumably replicated the appearance of the original stone when the original was new.[32]

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