welcome roger & thanx
ctmany & the greater ctmany area must rank among the loveliest of
our great american tristates
& i say that not just because i live about 10 miles from there
but it was funny to see my former townsman bob estabrook in the
article making the same tired but untrue claim about why connecticut
isnt mentioned on the marker
which i have previously disabused him of
the real reason is not chintziness but simply the fact that the
marker was one of a series of line stones that were used to remark
the massachusetts new york state line in 1898
& many others like it can be seen at intervals along the many line
connecticut was never consulted
--- In
BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Roger_Rowlett"
<roger.rowlett@a...> wrote:
>
> 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.