The Beginning Point of the U.S. Public Land Survey is a monument at the border between the U.S. states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, on the north side of the Ohio River. It is near the three-way intersection of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the northern tip of West Virginia, in both the Pittsburgh metropolitan area and the East Liverpool micropolitan area. It is significant as being the point from which the Public Land Survey System was performed, starting in 1785, which would open what was then the Northwest Territory for settlement. The survey was "the first mathematically designed system and nationally conducted cadastral survey in any modern country" and is "an object of study by public officials of foreign countries as a basis for land reform." It was conducted in the late 18th century by Geographer of the U.S. Thomas Hutchins surveying the Seven Ranges.
Built in 1881, it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The area that is landmarked includes a part of Ohio and a part of Pennsylvania. A plaque at the site states that the true starting point was 1,112 feet further south. The commemorative site is located about 2 miles east of the center of East Liverpool on Ohio State Route 39 and Pennsylvania Route 68.
Famous quotes containing the words beginning, point, public, land and/or survey:
“Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning with revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)
“Modern dancers are inconvenienced by a local ordinance requiring the passage of visible light between partners.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)