Sea Level Bench Mark

The stone is a post of Indiana Bedford limestone with a square hole in its top and the letters USBM around it. When the Coast and Geodetic Survey described it in 1954 it stood in the station park of the Chicago and North Western at Fort Robinson, 76.3 feet east of the depot; the depot and its trees are gone and the rails abandoned. In 2010 a geocacher reported the corner with the U broken off. Its adjusted height is 3,786.08 feet, nearly two feet above the old 1929 figure.

What the plaque says

Sea Level Bench Mark The stone monument at this location is one of Nebraska's original bench marks. Surveyors use bench marks to determine elevations. This one was placed by the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey in 1902. It was part of a larger project in which a sea-level based elevation was carried by surveyors from coast to coast. This established the state's first precise levels. Today this marker, designated "H 4," is approximately 3,786 feet above mean sea level. Professional Surveyors Association of Nebraska Nebraska State Historical Society, 2018

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Robinson State Park — 0.4 mi
  The army post beside the Red Cloud Agency where Crazy Horse was bayoneted in 1877 and Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out into the January cold of 1879.
• Toadstool Geologic Park — 15 mi
  A pocket of badlands in the Oglala National Grassland where sandstone caps balance on clay stems, ancient tracks cross the rock, and a trail leads on to a 10,000-year-old bison bone bed.
• Agate Fossil Beds National Monument — 21 mi
  A fossil quarry on the Niobrara that also keeps the gifts Red Cloud and other Lakota and Cheyenne visitors gave the ranching family who were their friends for thirty-five years.

More markers nearby

• The Flight of the Cheyennes — steps away
• Fort Robinson and the Railroad — 0.2 mi
• Fort Robinson — 0.2 mi
• The Fort Robinson Cemetery — 0.2 mi