The Terminal Monument

Out here on the empty high plains, three states meet at a single stone. This is the Terminal Monument, set in eighteen ninety-two at the corner where Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota come together. It marks the western end of the long survey that drew the line between the two Dakotas.

From eighteen ninety-one to eighteen ninety-two, surveyors ran that boundary westward all the way from the Bois de Sioux River, setting hundreds of markers as they went. When they finally reached the Montana line, they planted this terminal stone and carved into it the distance they had traveled, about three hundred eighty miles, measured in the old surveyor's units of miles and chains. Many of those border stones have since fallen, been moved, or vanished. This one still stands, a quiet full stop at the end of an enormous line drawn across the prairie.