Michigan Meridian Initial Point, Michigan

All of Michigan was surveyed from an initial point near its southern border. 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. A jog in the baseline here causes this to be a double Initial Point, the only one in the country. The two points are on the same north/south meridian, but are 935 feet apart (in surveyor terms, 14.18 chains—one chain is 66 feet). This discrepancy is the result of an error detected after the surveys east of the meridian had been completed, between the years 1815 and 1824, but before the surveys west of the meridian were begun. In 1974, the Initial Points were monumented with twenty-foot wide concrete discs by the Michigan Society of Land Surveyors, which had plans for building a surveying museum at the site.  This never happened. The northern Initial Point is in a swamp which has undermined the concrete disc. The large descriptive medallion on top of the north Initial Point has been stolen. It was replaced with a simple survey marker erected by the county. The stepped commemorative disc at the southern Initial Point has weathered better.