On 28 September 1997, Valerie Hartung and I tried to reach Delaware's two TriState points, both at the northern end of the state. The westernmost of these is just northwest of Newark, Delaware, in rolling mixed woodland and farming country. The northern boundary of Delaware, adjacent to Pennsylvania, is mostly composed of an arc, from a point in the middle of the Delaware River, curving northwest and later southwest until it hits the "Mason-Dixon line" which forms the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary, as well as the traditional boundary between "the North" and "the South" in the United States. A web page describing Delaware states: "This boundary was set in a land grant made to William Penn by the duke of York in 1682. It was to be within a circle with a 12-mile radius from 'the end of the horse dyke' at New Castle." Then, perhaps even more oddly, the DE-PA boundary runs west for about a mile along that Mason-Dixon line, before hitting the TriState point and the northern end of the eastern boundary of this part of Maryland. The above source does not describe the history of Delaware's border with Maryland.
There is a three-way road junction about a quarter of a mile south of the TriState point, just inside Delaware. Since I knew there was a trail along the Mason-Dixon line farther west (see the MD-PA-WV story), I thought the best chance would be a trail approaching the TriState point from the road just to the west. However, when we got to the place where the road crossed into Pennsylvania, the property east of the road and in Maryland had some very strongly-worded "No Trespassing" signs, and just to the north, no evidence of any trails or other access ways. Since the map showed no road likely to help from the north, we backtracked to the junction and took the fork toward the northeast. We hoped for a side road that might approach the TriState point, but no luck. The USGS topographic map showed that there was a monument very near the road where the northern Delaware border arc terminated at the Mason-Dixon line, an interesting point, that we decided to visit. It was shown as just south of the road, at a point where the road just nipped into Pennsylvania. Sure enough, a nice monument from 1896, with the corner carved in granite on the top of the monument post. After photographing that, we decided to look at the two points where the road crossed the state line. When we approached the western one, we were pleased to see a fresh surveyor's cut line along the state line, blazed with red plastic! Maybe there was still hope.
I checked the topographic map, and it looked as if we were about a mile from the TriState point, so it seemed too much to hope that this modern re-survey of the Mason-Dixon would extend all the way, but we set off west anyway. All the way to the TriState point and beyond, the Pennsylvania side was state land, so we were not too worried about trespass-- the Delaware side was state land as well, for a while. About 1/3 of the way along, we crossed a small creek indicated by the contours on the map, about 2/3 of the way, the surveyors' trail ended with a prominent corner mark for Delaware State land. With no trail to guide us, and private land now on the Delaware side, I did some map-reading, and found that the main valley running eastward to the north of us came from the TriState point almost exactly. So, we went a little north to avoid the private land, and west in Pennsylvania, knowing that the creek would lead us to the point. A deer hunting stand made us realize that we were wandering about in the woods in late September wearing tweeds and beige, but we pressed on. When we had gone about the right distance, Valerie noticed an upright post covered with orange plastic. It turned out to be a rock about 18 inches high and 5 inches square, set vertically and surrounded by other rocks. And just uphill from it, about 10 meters away, was a small tree stump covered with white plastic. Then we noticed another orange plastic cairn to the west, and then another, all three of the same construction. From the third and westernmost of these, we noticed a line of at least three markers going up the will southward. Two were pieces of black plastic PVC pipe, wrapped with white plastic near their tops, and the third was wrapped in orange. They were in a dead straight line exactly aligned with the westernmost rock cairn, apparently north-south, and we suspected but could not prove that they were along the Maryland- Delaware border, with that cairn covered with orange marking the TriState point. We took some pictures, but then looked to the north a little, where the map showed a "MDP monument" right about where the stream was. We could not find anything like that at or near the stream, which casts some doubt on whether we were actually at the TriState point, but there seemed to be nothing more that we could do with the information and instruments at our disposal, so we decided to head back to the car.
At the time, I decided to consider that we were at the TriState point, but later information from another TriStater indicated that there is a prominent monument at the actual TriState point, so we were not at it after all. Obviously, I should get a GPS receiver for future expeditions like this!