Along the Mason-Dixon Line, travelers can still see some of the gorgeous vistas Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon enjoyed in the 18th century.
Fifteen miles south of Philadelphia is the Chester County town of Embreeville, home of the Stargazer's Stone and Harland House, where the accomplished English surveyors found hospitality and the convivial company of its owner, John Harland, a Quaker farmer.
About 750 feet north of Harland House, Mason and Dixon used the stars and their instruments to determine their longitude, making the Stargazer's Stone the most accurately measured point in America at that time.
In 1763, Mason and Dixon spent their first Christmas in America at Harland House, now the private residence of Kate Roby.
At the other end of the state, in Western Pennsylvania's Somerset County, just outside the Dixie Motel, is a marker from the 1902 resurvey of the line. The marker is set in the original mound of stone placed by Mason and Dixon and is easily accessible because it sits behind the motel off U.S. Route 40.
Many of the boundary stones are on private property so travelers should tread carefully.
To visit the Mason-Dixon Line outside of Pittsburgh, you can drive 50 miles south to Mount Morris, which is Exit 1 on I-79. The marker left atop Brown's Hill, three miles southwest of Mount Morris in Greene County, is dated 1883 because a resurvey of the line was done that year by Cephas Sinclair.
West Virginia became a state before the Civil War. After that conflict, Pennsylvania and Virginia agreed to resurvey their common borders; most of Sinclair's survey was done in 1883 and finished in 1885.
(A century earlier, in 1784, surveyor Andrew Ellicott and his team established the southwest corner of Pennsylvania. Mason and Dixon never reached this point, which is roughly 22 miles from Brown's Hill, because their Indian guides would not allow them to proceed.)
In Maryland, the Mason-Dixon Line cuts through Pen Mar, an unincorporated village just inside the state line. Pen Mar, between Gettsyburg and Hagerstown, Md., is the northern starting point for Maryland's section of the Appalachian Trail.
East of Pen Mar is a brick Quaker meeting house near the intersection of Maryland State Routes 272 and 273.
"William Penn actually built the meeting house before the boundary was settled. The meeting house ended up in Maryland," said Todd Babcock, a professional surveyor who lives in Fleetwood, Pa., and has devoted his spare time over the past 18 years to preserving the Mason-Dixon Line.
About a mile from the Quaker meeting house is Plumpton Park Zoo. There, visitors can see the top of a Mason and Dixon boundary stone that was originally part of Milestone 10 in Maryland along Route 272.
Edward Plumstead rescued that stone when bulldozers were running back and forth over the area during construction of apartment buildings.
In Western Maryland, at Fort Frederick, which is near a town called Clear Spring, Mason and Dixon left behind 20 to 30 stones that were too heavy to be carried over Sideling Hill. Some of those stones became cornerstones or thresholds in local homes.
In one instance, Babcock said, stone was used in a barn built near the home of Capt. Evan Shelby, who housed Mason and Dixon and led them to a nearby mountain so they could see how close the Potomac River came to their boundary.
Babcock recommends visiting Sideling Hill along Route 68, where the Mason-Dixon Line is just to the north and the view to the east is spectacular. Parking is available, but the visitors center exhibits are closed due to lack of funds.
At mile marker 56 in Lineboro, a town on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, the Mason-Dixon marker is gone. One old-timer believes the stone was buried during the 1930s when federal workers widened the road.
Sometimes, highways ran too close to the stones and damage resulted. In Maryland, mile marker 65 was a crown stone located along the shoulder of Line Road, also called Mason Dixon Road.
"The road runs right along the boundary. No matter where we put it, it's going to be along the edge of the road," Babcock said, making it a target for damage by cars. The Maryland Geological Survey has the top of the original crown stone.
In Pennsylvania, a similar situation arose at mile marker 40, where a boundary stone was knocked over. The York County Historical Society has the top of that stone.
"It's not a good place to put another stone. We should put another one off to the side of the road," Babcock said. In Rising Sun, Md., a town just south of the line, Babcock ate breakfast with his colleague and fellow surveyor, Charlie Bitler Jr. Their waitress took orders and poured coffee with a y'all Southern drawl.
"I remember commenting to Charlie that it's almost a different dialect. We're a mile below this imaginary line and people already talk differently."
(Marylynne Pitz can be reached at mpitz(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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