Sixth Principal Meridian Initial Point, Kansas

The land comprising the states of Kansas, Nebraska, most of Colorado and Wyoming, and some of South Dakota, was locked into the national grid from a survey marker located at here, referred to as the Sixth Principal Meridian Initial Point. It is one of 37 federal survey points of origin covering the USA (outside of the 13 original colonies), known as Initial Points, selected over a span of 150 years, to anchor newly acquired federal land to the legal and cartographic grid. The Sixth Principal Meridian is a north/south line used to survey several states, within an area mostly acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The meridian was established in 1855 in order to survey the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas. Surveyors started where the 40th degree of latitude met the Missouri River, and headed west to establish the baseline. After 108 miles they stopped, as instructed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, due to “apprehensions of hostile interruptions from the Indians.” So the Initial Point was set there, and the meridian established north and south. The baseline was eventually extended west, and became the state line between Nebraska and Kansas. By modern times, the Initial Point had been heavily monumented, mostly in 1986 and 1987 by a group known as the Professional Surveyors of the Sixth Principal Meridian, consisting of surveyors from the states affected directly by the meridian. The original surveyor’s stone, which had been broken and buried for many years, was rediscovered in 1986. The Professional Surveyors of the 6th Principal Meridian reburied it at the exact location of the original Initial Point, 66 feet west of the interpretive monuments. A 24-foot square concrete pad was poured around the stone, which was left accessible through a cavity in the middle of the pad, accessed by a manhole cover. Underneath the commemorative manhole cover, a couple of feet down, is the original red sandstone surveyor's rock from 1856, now embedded with a BLM surveying disc.