Points On a Map-- Part 2: The Mason-Dixon Line

THE MASON-DIXON LINE: Best known as the demarcation between North and South in the years leading up to and including the Civil War, but this survey was actually erected a century before the war to settle a Colonial feud between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

The Penn family of Pensylvania and the Calvert family of Maryland had long argued about the border between their two colonies and, abiding by a court order, hired the acclaimed English surveyors George Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to mark the border.

Placement of stone markers began in 1763 and some of those stones are still there and also by borders of Delaware and West Virginia.

Todd Bacock, 48, a surveyor from Athens, Pennsylvania, helped launch the Mason & Dixon Line Preservation Partnership in 1990 and has spent many hours working to preserve these historic markers. He is amazed at the accuracy of the line, which was charted based on the stars, as well as the sheer physical accomplishment of marking it.

More to Come. --RoadDog