From November 1763 to September 1768, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed the border between the provinces of Maryland and Pennsylvania. They set carved limestones, with a “P” on the Pennsylvania side and a “M” or the Maryland side every mile along the boundary. Every fifth mile they set a Crown Stone, that was carved in Portland, England, with the Calvert family crest of the Maryland side and the Penn family crest of the Pennsylvania side. This Crown stone in numbered 40, as it is 40 miles west of the northeast corner of Maryland.
On Saturday May 21, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. the Mason and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership unveiled a new Crown Stone at Mile 40 on the Mason and Dixon Line. The original stone set by Mason and Dixon in November 1766 was destroyed and thought to have been lost forever.
During the Re-survey of 1901-03, the top was discovered to have been broken off and the base was found still in place. Owing to the “adverse attitude of the owner of the ground, it was not thought expedient to replace the monument in the same position”. A replacement stone was set approximately 150 feet to the west of the original and in the 1950’s that stone was also broken off. The top of that stone now resides in the York County Historical Society.
In 2012, Jim Poole contacted Todd Babcock, a Pennsylvania surveyor with the Mason and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership, about his interest in locating the position of the original stone. Todd and Pat Simon, a Maryland surveyor with the Mason and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership, studied the field notes of Mason and Dixon as well as a 1902 re-survey performed by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and calculated the location where the stone should be. Pat Simon then performed a field survey to mark the location where the stone would have been located. A shovel excavation was made and the base of the original stone was found 1.5 feet west of the computed location.
Now, 250 years after being set by Mason and Dixon, a New Indiana Limestone replica was set adjacent to the original base uncovered by the Partnership.
Boy Scout Tristan Eberle of Harford County performed an Eagle Scout project of creating a pit to surround the stone.
* BYOP
