By Gaby M. Neunzert, PLS
One of the more noticeable visual effects of a United States and Canada political map are some of the “straight line” boundaries of the western states or provinces. Usually boundaries follow natural features such as rivers, shore lines or watersheds, but, for example, Colorado and Wyoming are bound by east-west and north-south lines artificially drawn on a white paper and physically anchored in a featureless landscape. Both states would show up as rectangles on a Mercator map, even though on the ground the north-south boundaries as meridians converge on the North Pole and the east-west lines are parallel, small circle routes. Most of these states or provinces were created on paper during the 1840-1870 time period, with their boundaries physically surveyed on the ground some time later. Drawing these boundaries on a map, especially on a Mercator projection, is very easy, i.e., draw a rectangle; surveying the same boundaries on the ground before GPS and portable time, was considerably more difficult. With a transit and without calculations, establishing true north for the meridian involved mechanically splitting sightings of Polaris or a circumpolar star at eastern and western elongation. But since flashlights had not been invented, a lantern with a candle had to be used to illuminate the cross hairs and make field notes. At lower latitudes sighting Polaris was easy since the star was only 35º to 40º above the horizon and prolonging a straight line towards it produced good results; weather and a remote location aside, running the border between Alaska and Canada could not have been easy with the pole star further and further overhead.
