Four Corners Monument & Marker

This is the only spot in the country where four states touch — Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico — and it is also the line between the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute reservation, whose land it sits on. Surveyors set it in the 1860s and 1870s with compass and chain, sighting off Shiprock, and they missed the true mathematical corner by about a third of a mile. It doesn't matter. In boundary law the marker on the ground wins over the math, so the corner is wherever they put the stone.

What the plaque says

Four Corners – A Common Bond This is the only place in the United States marking the common corner of four states — Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Who established this corner? The four corners monument was established and perpetuated by U.S. Government Surveyors and Astronomers beginning in 1868. Surveyors Darling, Robbins, Reeves and Carpenter surveyed the boundary lines between the states. Rollin Reeves 1878 Utah Colorado Howard Carpenter 1901 Ehud Darling 1868 Arizona New Mexico Chandler Robbins 1875 Indian Lands The four corners area is surrounded by Indian lands. The Navajo Nation lies in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. The Ute Mountain Ute Nation is located in Colorado. Respect the culture and traditions of the four corners area. In 1899, U.S. Surveyors Hubert Page and James Lentz found the four corners monument disturbed and broken. They marked and set a new stone at the original location. Everett Kimmell, General Land Office, remonumented the Page-Lentz stone with a concrete and brass monument in 1931. The Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs poured a concrete paving block around the Kimmell monument in 1962. In 1992, Cadastral Surveyors Darryl Wilson and Jack Eaves officially remonumented the deteriorating Kimmell marker with an aluminum bronze disc. The structure that you see today was rebuilt by the Bureau of Land Management.

Where it stands