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Thanks to the efforts of the Hamilton County Engineer’s Office, Dearborn County Surveyor, JMA Consultants and District 9 Land Survey Co., a 163-year-old Ohio-Indiana State line monument was
saved.
Sometime prior to November 20, 2001, the 9 foot, 5,000 pound monument had been mysteriously uprooted from its resting place of 163 years at the intersection of US 50 (River Road) and State Line Road.
The monument came to exist back in 1838 because of doubts as to the exact location of the extreme southern part of the Ohio-Indiana line originally run by a surveyor named Israel Ludlow.
Early in 1837, a joint commission was authorized by the legislature of both states to retrace and monument this part of the line.
The Commission employed surveyor Nathaniel L. Squibb of Hartford, Indiana, to retrace the lower portion.
He began about 4 miles north of the Ohio River and ran south recovering Ludlow’s original marks as best he could.
Squibb’s work resulted in two large monuments that were set on November 27, 1838.
The first monument was placed near the mouth of the Great Miami River.
The second monument, which is the one recently uprooted, was set about 3 miles north of the first monument.
The monument at US 50 and State Line road is a tapered cylindrical shaft of fine-grain sandstone 9 feet long weighing 5,000 pounds. It rests on a square block of freestone embedded in a cubic yard of broken stone.
A bronze tablet was attached to the monument by the Col. Archibald Lochry chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on October 11, 1929.
The two monuments mentioned above and one set in 1915 at the northwest corner of Ohio are believed, as of 1933, to be the only authoritative monuments on the entire Ohio-Indiana line.
Thanks to the hard work and quick response by many people, this monument was reset on its original foundation and position.
-Bob Heidkamp
Historical Information provided by C.E. Sherman, C.E. Ohio Topographic Survey, Volume 4 Copyright 1933
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Hamilton
County Engineer
