Swamp marked starting point of Louisiana Purchase survey

A granite monument erected in 1926 commemorates the 1815 land survey of the Louisiana Purchase. Surveyors marked two gum trees from which all future surveys of Arkansas and parts of 14 western states were carved from. The trees were rediscovered more than 100 years later during a border dispute between Philips and Monroe Counties. (Democrat Photo/Mark Randall)

It was here in 1815 where two surveying lines crossed to mark the initial point from which all future surveys of the Louisiana Purchase would originate.

All or parts of 14 states, including Arkansas, would be carved from the lands obtained by the Louisiana Purchase.

This little known spot which helped shape the history of the United States is today marked by a granite monument in Louisiana Purchase State Park.

"This is where we decided that the country was going to go to the Pacific," said Joe Jacobs, spokesman for Arkansas State Parks. "That's where they made the first mark to lay out the Louisiana Purchase. Everything that later became the western states, was measured from that spot."

President Thomas Jefferson purchased nearly 900,000 square miles of uncharted land from Napoleon and France in 1803 for $15 million or less than three cents an acre.

Jefferson called the purchase "a transaction replete with blessings to unborn millions of men."

The purchase doubled the size of the nation and helped shape the destiny of the United States.

Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the area in 1805, but the vast lands were not officially surveyed until 12 years later.

And while history remembers the names of Lewis and Clark who pushed on to the Pacific, the other explorers of the Louisiana Purchase have been largely forgotten.

In October 1804, another team, led by William Dunbar, one of the best known scientists of the day, and George Hunter, a Philadelphia chemist, were commissioned by Jefferson to explore the lower part of the Louisiana Purchase.

"There were actually two parties who went out," Jacobs said. "The Hunter-Dunbar party came up from Louisiana the same time as Lewis and Clark."

In 1815 President James Madison ordered an official survey so the land could be distributed as payment to veterans of the War of 1812.

Surveyors Prospect K. Robbins and Joseph C. Brown set out on Nov. 10, 1815 to establish an initial point from which other surveys would originate.

A party led by Robbins headed north from the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi River to establish a north-south line which would become known as the Fifth Principal Meridian, while Brown headed west from the junction of the St. Francis and Mississippi River to establish an east-west baseline.

The surveyors sometimes found themselves up to their waists in swamp and described the land in their journals as "low and contains cypress and briers and thickets in abundance."

The crossing of the lines became the "initial point" of the survey. Robbins marked two gum trees about 18 inches in diameter as witness trees where the lines crossed.

The significance of the site was virtually forgotten for over 100 years. It was rediscovered in 1921 by Tom Jacks and Eldridge P. Douglas of Helena who came across the slashed witness trees while checking the Phillips and Lee County boundary lines.

"By all odds of probability, this had to be the original point for the Louisiana Purchase survey," Jacks later remarked in an interview.

Ladies from the local chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution recognized the site's historical significance on October 27, 1926 and erected the monument seen today.

"For a long time it was lost," Jacobs said. "But then some other surveyors who were going through that area found the marked tree. And it's been preserved since then."

The land became a state park in 1961 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. A 950 foot boardwalk which guides visitors to the site was added in the late 1970s.

Jacobs said the park is a little known, but significant piece of history.

"It's important not just to Arkansas, but is a very important piece of American history," Jacobs said.

The east-west baseline and the Fifth Principal Meridian are fundamental in land transactions throughout the western United States.

It was only after this point was established and land surveys conducted outward that land grants could be issued to settlers and ranchers and towns platted.

"It's where it all started," Jacobs said. "All of the frontier towns started being built after this."

Jacobs said visitors to the park also can get a good sense of what Arkansas looked like back in the early 19th century.

Before the days of wholesale drainage and clearing, headwater swamps were common in eastern Arkansas.

"When you start looking at the terrain there it gives you a good sense of what they had to go through," Jacobs said. "These guys were standing out in the middle of that thing surveying back before there were rubber boots. A lot of these areas have been timbered or drained and stripped for agricultural purposes. But it's pretty much like it was back then."