The Four Corners Monument marks the quadripoint in the Southwestern United States where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. It is the only point in the United States shared by four states, leading to this area being called the Four Corners region. The monument also marks the boundary between two semi-autonomous native American governments, the Navajo Nation, which maintains the monument as a tourist attraction, and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation.
The origins of the state boundaries marked by the monument occurred during the American Civil War, when the United States Congress acted to form governments in the area to combat Confederate ambitions for the region. Claims are sometimes made that the monument was misplaced in the initial surveys. The accuracy of the surveys has been defended by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey and the monument has been legally established as the corner of the four states.
Read more about Four Corners Monument: Monument, Location, History
Famous quotes containing the words corners and/or monument:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)