[PW] Re: Project-Wombat-FM Digest, Vol 13, Issue 3

[Dennis McClendon]

> New Mexico appears
> to "intrude" into Oklahoma by about a mile along the northern stretch
> of the border

As best as I can determine from "Boundaries, Areas, Geographic  
Centers and Altitudes of the United States and the Several States,"  
by Edward M. Douglas, Geological Survey Bulletin 817, U.S. Government  
Printing Office, 1930), the Texas-New Mexico line was supposed to  
have been the 103rd meridian, but the Clark survey of that boundary  
in 1859-60 was inaccurate, and the north end was placed at  
103-02-28.28.  A 1911 joint resolution of Congress declared the Clark  
line the official boundary.  When the "Public Land Strip" (Oklahoma  
panhandle) was included in the Territory of Oklahoma, its western  
edge was simply specified as the New Mexico boundary.  That was  
accepted as the Cimarron meridian (103-00-06.78) rather than the  
Clark line, which governed only the Texas-New Mexico line.

This publication gives the difference as "about 2.1 miles."