Ute Meridian Initial Point, Colorado

The Ute Indians of western Colorado were given a much larger reservation according to a 1868 treaty, but in 1880 it was reduced to a zigzag of township squares along the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers, to entice them into agricultural practices. No patents were ever issued to the Utes here though. Most settled elsewhere, such as the larger Uinitah Ute reservation in Utah, or assimilated. This, the last survey of the four done by the federal government on Indian reservations, was unused and unnecessary. The survey point is inside the fence line of the Grand Junction regional airport. 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.