courtesy photo Jerry Penry of Milford, second from left, and the group with which he travelled to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to search for a mark scratched into the rock by a team of surveyors in 1859 to designate the southwest corner of the Nebraska Territory. Above, from left Geof Stephenson, Penry, Pete Modreski, Kurt Svoboda, Steve Brosemer, Gene Thomsen and Doyle Abrahamson.

by Robert Stewart

    Tracking down history can sometimes take you a little off the beaten path. Just ask Jerry Penry of Milford.
     Penry, a surveyor, recently joined five other surveyors and a geologist in the Colorado Rockies to try to locate the southwest corner of the Nebraska Territory as originally plotted by a team of surveyors in 1859.
     The group was looking for a "+" chiseled into a rock by the 1859 surveyors that was to mark the southwest corner of the Nebraska Territory.
     "It was to be the end line which was also to be the summit of the Rocky Mountains," Penry said.
     At the time the "+" mark was made Nebraska Territory was situated across what are currently parts of Colorado, Wyoming and the Dakotas to the Canadian border.
     To assist in locating the "+" Penry had notes from the original surveyor's group, obtained from the Bureau of Land Management in Denver, Colo. The 1859 group was seeking to establish a Base Line forming the southern border of the territory on the 40 degree north latitude line.
     To create the Base Line the 1859 group created horizontal measurements using chains, 33 feet in length. It took two surveyors to manipulate the chains and two of the 33 foot lengths to make the increment of measurement known as a "chain." One "chain" equalled 66 feet and 40 "chains" equalled one-half mile. The group placed permanent markers every one-half mile.
     Although many of the permanent markers have been obscured by the passage of time, two of the Colorado surveyors in Penry's group located markers in the mountains, which helped when trying to located the "+". Penry said the search for markers was made somewhat difficult by the environment in which they are located.
     "The hardest part is you're finding a stone on a mountain of stones," he said.
     The last 21 miles the 1859 group covered were in the mountains, which Penry said could have made obtaining the horizontal measurements needed to establish the Base Line somewhat difficult. It would have required on person to hold the chain near the ground while the other held his end in the air. However, Penry said that the 1859 group did a good job of maintaining exactitude, except in their stopping point.
     "All the measurements were accurate. They just stopped short of where they should have been (at the summit)," he said.
     He did say that the "+" is located at a higher elevation than the Continental Divide.
     The notes Penry obtained mentioned that the 1859 group had to deal with heavy fog and snow 25 feet deep. The fog may have affected their ability to locate the true summit of the Rocky Mountains.
     "They were instructed to stop at the summit of the Rocky Mountains. They stopped on a ridge that didn't go anywhere," Penry said. "We really don't know for sure why they stopped short."
     In the notes for the 1859 group, they described their stopping point as a "towering granite with a knife edge barely an inch wide that a man cannot stand upon."
     This was the location Penry and his group were trying to reach. They camped in the mountains on July 28. At 4:20 a.m. they began to climb to were they believed the "+" to be located. Penry reached the summit at 10 a.m. He said that although the ascent required no climbing equipment, it was somewhat difficult.
     "We didn't have to scale any walls or anything," he said. "The east side (of the Rockies) is basically pretty broken. It was just huge rocks we were going over."
     The 1859 group had left a pile of stones known as a "rock witness mound" and contained in their notes were a direction and distance to travel from the mound to locate the "+".
     Penry and his group used the information contained in the old notes as well as modern global positioning system (GPS) technology to locate the position of the "+".
     "(We were) looking for something from 1859, but using 2006 technology to find it," Penry said.
     In order to get accurate reading from the GPS satellite, the group had to duct tape an antenna to a rock as the terrain was too rough to allow for a tripod to be assembled.
     After determining the location of the "+", the group had to scrape away the lichen which had accumulated on the surface of the rock containing the mark. Penry said removing the lichen was a task in itself.
     "If you can imagine having concrete (dried) on the blade of a shovel, that's what it's like," he said.
     The group removed the lichen with wire brushes and found the "+" hidden beneath.
     "Once we got it uncovered with the wire brushes it was unmistakable that that's what it was," Penry said.
     Penry's group also found the letters ACB on a nearby rock wall. The letters may have been the initials of one of the members of the 1859 group, Albert C. Bringhurst, mentioned in their notes.
     A second surveying team in 1867 placed an "x" on the true summit, west of the location the 1859 group reached. Some of the Colorado members of Penry's group travelled to locate this mark at the true summit on Aug. 19. Locating it involved its own set of difficulties. It was more accessible, but the group could not find any markers leading up to the sight.
     "They think hikers have thrown the rocks over the side, not knowing what they were," Penry said.
     However the group did locate the "x" and placed a new marker to establish its location.
     "They've installed a true permanent marker," Penry said.
    
     Nancy McGill of the Milford Times contributed to this story.