The New York Times Travel Section on Friday, Oct. 8, devoted more
than a full page to Connecticut's highest point Mount Frissell and
the Taconic Trail. It included 4 pictures (including one of the tri-
state marker) and 2 maps
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/travel/escapes/08LEAF.html
The section on the tri-state marker says:
Some three-quarters of a mile beyond Round Mountain on the south
slope of Mount Frissell, the trail climbs to the highest point in
Connecticut, a humble 2,380 feet (the mountain's actual summit, at
2,453 feet, is in Massachusetts).
A little farther, the trail led past a stone pillar similar to the
one off East Street, but this one marked the convergence of three
states New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. These days, hikers
can join hands and step around the monument like dancers circling a
maypole, delighting in the novelty of three states only a footstep
apart. But only three sides of the rectangular pillar are actually
engraved: on the north and eastern sides with the word Massachusetts
and on the western side with New York. Connecticut's uncarved face
has to make do with the state's name scrawled in black marker.
"The state was too chintzy to pay for it," explained Bob Estabrook,
the town perambulator for nearby Salisbury, Conn. At the time the
marker was placed in 1898, "the funds got tangled up in the
legislature and never came through," according to Mr. Estabrook,
whose duty, he said, "is to walk the township boundaries every five
years to watch for acts of aggression from New York and
Massachusetts."
On a bare windswept ridge about 2.2 miles into the hike, the Mount
Frissell Trail meets the South Taconic Trail. There, the route turns
north toward Alander Mountain, the third and final peak, and a hand-
painted sign is marked with destinations, distances and arrows. A
windsock hangs from the bald summit of neighboring Brace Mountain,
and views extend well into the Hudson River Valley of New York.
Directly below, some 1,400 precipitous feet, a stand of well-tended
farms gather around the glittering Noster Kill. Farther west, the
valley rumples like an old bedsheet to end spectacularly at the
rampart of the Catskills spiking up along the horizon.