INDIANA, MICHIGAN and OHIO
all connect right here!  Or, do they?

It happens up there on Williams County Road #1 in the very northwestern corner of Ohio.

The aging asphalt surface of that country road dissolves into gravel when it encounters the Michigan state line at Sue's feet in the smaller photo.  It appears the Indiana line joins from the west, arriving near the point of the Williams County road sign to her right.

The thought-to-be precise point of juncture once was marked by an embedded, survey monument where she stands  It now appears to be gone; the likely victim of a snowplow or vandalism.  Or, since that marker displayed a prominent, cast letter "M" it is entirely conceivable its disappearance could be traced to the football rivalry that continues between OH and MI.  

To this day, the precise location of that confluence of state lines remains in question.

Way back in the early 1800s when Lewis and Clark wandered through the area, when Ohio was achieving statehood, a war erupted between MI and OH--well, sort of--over an argument about whether Toledo was to be in one state or the other..

Armed men from both states were deployed along the disputed boundary but it appears no one was ever killed in the "Toledo" war.  This dispute ended with a compromise that awarded what we now know as the Upper Peninsula to MI and Toledo, and a sliver of land to the west, was left in OH. 

Some folks continue to question the wisdom of that decision.

In those years the technology of land survey depended on crude, hardwood markers, not exactly permanent in nature.  In fact, one of those was recently found in a swamp in the area which has added to the question of where the tri-state boundary really is.

Both Michigan and Indiana legislatures are establishing boundary commissions to grapple with the problem.  After all matters such as which state one's property is in, taxation, and law enforcement jurisdictions, for examples, depend on precise boundaries.  Especially taxation.

Sue and I were in the area to work on this blog story while enjoying our delightful hobby of geocaching.  We find these little caches via the technological expedient of the global positioning system (GPS) which is capable of precise determination of latitude and longitude.

We drove directly to a cache in Michigan about 500 feet or so north of the tri-state boundary and found it with ease.  We also found a cache entitled "Three States, 1 Cache" which was hidden in the bushes near the road sign in the little photo above.

Naturally, you cannot hide a cache in the middle of a road.

We also traveled west a bit and found a cache in a little country cemetery in Indiana.

These caches were placed and found with precise measurement of coordinates on a grid covering the Earth's surface.

Finding the precise location of boundaries expressed in the historic language of various treaties and measured by antique technology is quite another thing.

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We are not sure why the marker in our lead photo was placed in this field 130 feet north of the presumed, tri-state boundary.  Maybe it was due to the generosity of the land-owner.  What we are sure of is, neither of us had ever encountered a population of ticks on the order of magnitude we discovered while romping around in these weeds.

Turns out ticks were about as "buggy" as the precise location of this tri-state boundary.