The "Crossing The Line" Story

This is where Pennsylvania meets
Maryland at the Mason-Dixon Line.

It was an ordinary day.  Driving south from Quarryville on PA Rt. 472 until we reached the intersection with PA Rt. 841.  Made a right and within 50 yards we found ourselves on MD Rt. 213.  To cross from Pennsylvania into Maryland we had to cross the border known as the Mason-Dixon Line.  Seamless line on the road, but off to the right is a Lewisville, PA Post Office sign that told us that we were crossing the Mason-Dixon Line.  An imaginary line that separates the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania which seems so simple when crossing it, but it was a major achievement in Colonial America.  The surveying began in November of 1763 and wasn't totally completed until the early 1780's.  The line settled an ongoing dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland and eventually symbolized the division between the free North and the slave-holding South.  

Sign where I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line into Maryland.

Most of 1764 was spent establishing Pennsylvan- ia's eastern border with Delaware.  Then, 250 years ago this past month, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon crossed the Octorara Creek that divided Chester and Lancaster Counties in PA on the southern border of PA.  They spent the next several days surveying the exact land that I am not crossing and placing stone markers every mile apart along the way.  

This is a mile-marker with the Maryland side showing on the left.

The distance the border travels across Lancaster County is only 5 stones.  Four of every five stones is engraved with a "P" on one side and "M" on the other for the states it divides.  The fifth stone, known as a brownstone, is engraved with the coat of arms of Pennsylvania Penn's family and Maryland's Calvert family.  

Every fifth stone bears the coat-of-arms
of either Calvert or Penn.

It's not known exactly how many days the two surveyors took to cross southern Lancaster County, since surveyors of that time used complex instruments and calculated their measurements based on the position of the stars.  A few cloudy evenings could slow down progress considerably.  It is documented that the pair crossed the Conowingo Creek on May 11 and approached the Susquehanna River the next day.  They stopped 500 feet short of the river and spent a two weeks checking and adjusting their previous measurements.  On May 27 they walked down the riverbank and began measuring the width of the river by triangulation.  

This is known as the Star-Gazers' Stone at Embreeville, PA.
Click on the photo to read the content of the plaque.

The river at that point was 67.68 chains or 0.846 of a mile across.  Then, on June 22, 1765 they crossed the river into York County, PA.  By 1767 they had just about finished establishing the border between PA and MD except for the southwest corner which they never finished until 1782 due to hostile American Indians forcing a work stoppage for a few years.  

A map showing the location of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The Mason-Dixon Line was once again surveyed in 1901-03 using more sophisti- 
cated measuring devices and found to be remarkably accurate.  The new surveyors then reset the milestones in concrete bases and new stones were added for any that were missing.  To this day, the Mason-Dixon Line still divides the northern states from the southern states. On November 14, 1963, during the bicentennial of the Mason-Dixon Line, President John F. Kennedy opened a newly completed section of Interstate 95 where it crossed the Maryland-Delaware border along the Mason-Dixon Line.  Eight days later he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  The two sections of Interstate 95, on either side of the border, along the Mason-Dixon Line, were later named the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.