In BUS&SS, Van Zandt writes:

"Boundary monuments along the 49th parallel may vary in latitude by as much as a
second or more, because many of them were astronomic stations. It was not
thought practical to move these to the true parallel, and the boundary is
defined as the line joining successive stations."

and also:

"...the astronomic stations on the 49th parallel boundary east of the Rocky
Mountains vary from 6 seconds north to 8 seconds south of the mean parallel of
latitude--a range of more than a quarter of a mile."

Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Choate" <choatune@...>
To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 1:33 AM
Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: Plate Tectonics and Lat/Long boundaries

>
> > Here's an image(30KB) showing the relationship of the border
> monuments,
> > and the border, to 49 degrees north:
> > http://members.shaw.ca/canmapinfo/temp/49thborder.png
>
> Thanks. I like this graph, but what is the scale on the vertical
> axis. Also have you determined which side was short-changed? My
> guestimate is that there are more Canadian square kilometers that
> should be American square miles, but how many?
>
> the monument coordinates are listed at
> http://www.internationalboundarycommission.org/coordinates/M49thp.txt
> and i can calculate the area if you haven't already.
>
> Actually now I think I can answer my first question myself. I
> believe the distance between marker 4 and the 49th parallel is about
> 250.2 meters.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>