![]() The stones have received some press from the Washington Post’s John Kelly recently, and is a fantastic resource for information on the stones. The photographs on this page show several of the stones that mark a District of Columbia boundary that no longer exists. (Hamil Harris/The Washington Post) By Hamil R. Because of development pressures, many of the stones have been moved to more convenient locations– check out this map of actual vs. It was laid by Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker in 1792. The South Boundary Stone is America’s first federal monument, laid in 1791 by Benjamin Banneker as part of a surveying project to outline the newly created District of Columbia. Due to the development in the area, the stones now stand in such places as a church parking lot, a road’s median, and at the bottom of a pipe at Blue Plains Impoundment Lot. ![]() Many of the forty stones remain in their original places, including the ones that now mark the boundary of Arlington County, Virginia. Interestingly, the stones are the oldest federal monuments in the country, and they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The committee is studying the best way to preserve the stones on a case-by-case basis. The stones are made of sandstone, which is soft and not durable, which has caused the damage and cracks. Today, the Nation’s Capitol Boundary Stones Committee seeks to preserve the stones. However, by the mid-1900s several stones had been displaced by construction projects. In 1915, the Daughters of the American Revolution volunteered to maintain the stones, and they installed gates around each of them for protection. The boundary stones are the oldest federal monuments. The stones had four sides– facing inward towards DC (which read “Jurisdiction of the United States” and a mile number, facing outward (which showed the name of the bordering state, either Maryland or Virginia), and the other sides showed the year the stone was placed and the compass variance at that point. Stones placed at intervals of more than a mile included that extra distance measured in poles. But, Washington, DC also has several monuments that repres. But I was wrong– this myth is confirmed!īack in 17, Andrew Ellicott and friends went around the 10-mile square of the planned City of Washington and placed a boundary stone every mile. Most monuments, statues and memorials are built to honor an individual or an event - like a war. I’d never seen them or heard of them outside of that once, so I assumed it was a myth. I heard that these stones had been placed long ago when Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker were surveying the city, and that they’re mostly still there. ![]() This week we’ll talk about a myth I heard when I first moved to DC– that the city’s boundaries are marked off, every mile or so, with stones. Welcome to another week’s DC Mythbusting. ![]()
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