IMG_8187 Four Corners Monument – NM, AZ, CO, UT – 063007, originally uploaded by MoLisa44

Four Corners encompasses the point where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico meet – the only location in America where four states touch. The Four Corners are not a natural phenomena, rather a political construct – as if political other borders are more natural. This construct is the result of how Arizon became a State during the Civil War. The Confederate States were laying claim to the New Mexico and the Arizona Territories and the Congress, now without their Rebel counterparts, voted to create Arizona by deviding New Mexico and Arizona at the 32nd meridian west from Washington. You can see the Four Corners in the Google Maps view below:

Some enterprising cartographer and historian should research the transition of using natural borders to abstracted political borders and the causes and effects. Was this the result of the confluence of advances in surveying (probably not as George Washington himself was a master surveyor who set the fence post for the White House) or advances in river ecology (rivers shift their courses over time) or some greater Enlightenment quest for rationality and perfection?

Four Corners by penguinchris
I’ve long been fascinated with demarcation of territory, especially as a notion of boundary. Boundaries often were delineated by natural phenomena such as rivers, lakes or mountains. Just east of the Four Corners is the San Juan River, which is wholly ignored in laying out the territories. At what point did boundary, often manifested through corporeal elements (walls, fence, etc), detach to become abstracted Monadic elements?