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Office of Gov. Dennis Daugaard
500 E. Capitol Ave.
Pierre, S.D. 57501
605-773-3212
125th Anniversary Feature
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014
Contact: Jim Soyer at 605-773-5689 or Jim.Soyer@state.sd.us
Quartzite Pillars Divide Dakotas
By Bill Vossler
One day Gordon Iseminger stopped a young man driving a tractor on a country road. “Do you know where any of the boundary markers between North and South Dakota are located around here?” he asked.
The young man, about 20 years old, said he didn’t know what Iseminger was talking about.
Truth is, he’s not the only one. Although the entire border between North Dakota and South Dakota is marked with 720 quartzite markers (with one of the 800-pound markers every half mile), to most Dakotans it’s a well-kept secret. “It’s the only state in the Union that has these markers along its entire border,” says Iseminger, history professor at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.
Less than half a mile further down-road from where the tractor and young man had come, Iseminger found the marker, like a little Washington monument there beside the road. “One woman in her 70s had lived near one all her life and didn’t know about it,” Iseminger says.
When Dakota Territory became the two states in 1889, the borders were to be surveyed at state expense. But R.F. Pettigrew, a South Dakota legislator, was able to get the federal government to pay.“Much of the land was federally owned, and there were two large Indian reservations which straddled the border (Standing Rock and Sisseton), so the federal government paid the bill of $25,000,” Iseminger says.
Iseminger used the original survey notes in his research about the markers.
The initial marker was supposed to have been in the middle of the channel of the river that delineates the Dakotas from Minnesota, but Bates couldn’t find a channel, so he put the first stone on the Dakota bank.
Each marker has information chiseled on three of its 10-inch-square sides including “N.D.” on one side, “S.D.” on the other and “M” on the third. The mileage to the initial east marker was chiseled above the “M.” The seven-foot-long markers, quarried in Sioux Falls, are diamond-hard, “and proved a good choice,” Iseminger said. “They weathered slowly. Few of the original monuments have been broken.”
At the quarry, the markers were chiseled with the proper information. According to steamboat company records and 50 old newspapers, they were loaded on railroad (Milwaukee Road for the eastern third, Northern Pacific for the western third) and steamboats (for the middle third of the boundary). From Dickinson the markers were loaded on four-horse teams and hauled 80 miles overland, five per load, to their destinations 3 ½ feet above and below the earth.
The surveyor’s professional journals document hardships, including mosquitos, bad food, a two-day blizzard in 1891 and working in snowdrifts 10 to 30 feet high.
The surveyor used surveying tools of the time – primitive now – and a same-time reading from the North Star every night. His work was later verified, and the line between the states was found the most perfect and comprehensive boundary line in the United States. In the 1940s, according to Iseminger, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey crews found some of the markers so well-positioned that they used them for their own triangular surveying. In addition, he says the markers are still used to settle land disputes today.
Not all the markers remain where they were, however. “It’s a credit to many of the farmers that they farm around them every year,” Iseminger says. “But there are some people who have taken some of the markers.” Iseminger says people shouldn’t be held up to ridicule for it, “but if a marker needs to be moved to build a road, it should be moved a few feet and preserved” rather than selfishly put in a yard or on a fireplace mantel.
Iseminger says he’s discovered as much about the markers as he thinks he can, unless the surveyor kept a personal diary in addition to his professional surveyor’s notes.
On the other hand, now people will know what the markers were truly for, and not react as a straw-bailing crew from Nebraska did. They thought the markers were scratching posts for cattle or grave markers for Dakota pioneers.
“People should know about these boundary markers, because the centennial is coming up,” Iseminger says. “They’re part of our historical heritage.”
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*Reprinted from a 1988 issue of the North Dakota REC/RTC News by permission of the author.
**A photo of Surveyor Charles Bates and a quartzite marker is attached, courtesy of South Dakota State Historical Society.
***A quartzite border pillar is available to viewers in front of the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre.