Page Base Line

The 1900 measurement here was one leg of a long field season. A party under A. L. Baldwin measured nine base lines along the ninety-eighth meridian between July 16, 1900, and January 16, 1901, with Page the northernmost. Five instruments shared the work, two 50-meter steel tapes, two 100-meter tapes and duplex bars, each standardized on a comparator checked with a bar in melting ice. The line crossed twelve barbed-wire fences and five cornfields. Its ends were lettered limestone blocks two feet square, set in cement, and it came out at 8,250.988 meters.

What the plaque says

Page Base Line In the late nineteenth century the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey undertook measurements to determine the nation's physical shape with absolute accuracy. This survey initially involved two triangulation networks. One survey stretched from coast to coast, while another stretched from Mexico to Canada. The north-south survey, known as the 98th Meridian Survey, came through central Nebraska during 1898-1901. Angles from observation towers were turned at night to lights on other towers located many miles apart. The distances between the points were computed mathematically by trigonometry. To make the triangulation computations, base lines had to be measured precisely on the ground approximately every one hundred miles. One of these important base lines, measuring 5.127 miles, was placed north of Page in 1900 in a SW to NE direction. The ends of this base line were marked with special monuments. In 2007 the monuments were recovered by a group of surveyors. The monument located here once marked the northeast endpoint of the Page Base Line, approximately six miles northeast of Page. Page Community and Professional Surveyors Association of Nebraska Nebraska State Historical Society, 2015

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park — 13 mi
  A watering hole in Antelope County where ash from an eruption in Idaho buried rhinoceroses and horses about twelve million years ago, now uncovered in place under the Hubbard Rhino Barn.
• Neligh Mill State Historic Site — 27 mi
  A brick flour mill on the Elkhorn, begun in 1873, that sold its flour as Gold Medal until 1940, ground until 1969, and still has its original 1880s equipment in place.
• Ponca Tribal Museum and Old Ponca Agency — 28 mi
  The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska's museum, powwow arena, talking trail and bison herd at the old agency near Niobrara, on homeland the nation was forced from in 1877.

More markers nearby

• O'Neill — 9.7 mi
• The Savidge Brothers, Aviation Pioneers — 11 mi
• O'Neill, Irish Capital of Nebraska — 12 mi
• U.S. Highway 281 — 13 mi