I have to finish this project up and, so, for the next several weeks I’ll be sneaking in a few posts that will shoot you over to my historic marker page. The concept there is pretty straightforward. I’ve been riding my bike all over the county to photograph the markers and the places they document. This has been an on-again-off-again project for years. Time to wrap it up. Here are two that will get us a bit closer to doing just that.
This is a superlative sign. It is the most difficult one in the county to get to. It was one of the hardest ones to find. Being from 1954 it is perhaps the oldest of the bunch. It has perhaps the widest ranging actual historical significance. And there’s less at this physical location than any other marker in the county. There’s absolutely nothing there:
You can see the other side, and the locale.
After France, late in the Colonial period gave all of this region to Britain surveyors marked the boundaries including this one in south Smiths Station. This line goes all the way across at least two states. I wonder if there are other signs elsewhere on this line.
Also, 18th century surveyor still sounds like an impossibly difficult job.
I had a professor once who explained that the railway switch that was located just down from this sign is why all of this is here. And then he’d walk you through a few decades of railway history and it made sense. And now the town which grew beside the railroad became a city and then a blue collar town and then it dried up and now it is making a comeback. And that’s about 100 years of history.
Click here to see the other side of the sign and a lot of the locale.
