Good stuff Dwayne.
An unrelated but similar historical note is that supposedly the Idaho/Montana border was to entirely be the Continental Divide, but right at Lost Trail Pass they took the wrong ridgeline North when surveying the official boundary. Once they realized the mistake it seems they said F it, and took a longitudinal line directly north to the Canadian border.
Missoula, the Flathead, most (maybe all) of Glacier National Park, etc........roughly the western third of Montana...would be in Idaho.
Edited: please let me reiterate ‘supposedly’. I don’t need to be street jumped on here from folks who believe otherwise.
If you look at a map of the Louisiana Purchase, this seems highly probable.
map If so the survey started in East Arkansas. One surveyor started at the mouth of the Arkansas River and went North, and another started at the mouth of the St. Francis river and went west. Where the lines crossed, a monument was set, and they started laying out townships, from that baseline west and range line North. Called the Fifth Principle Meridian. miles
