courtesy of the TUSCALOOSA NEWS http://blog.al.com/live/2010/02/surveyor_finds_old_mounds_mark.html

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- On the maps, the line between Alabama and Florida appears as a bold black line. There are signs on the highways marking the spots where cars cross from one state into the other.

But for many years, the original state line was lost. Now, a Tuscaloosa man working with Auburn University has helped rediscover it.

"Ever since I've come to Tuscaloosa, I've heard people talk about the mound line," said Milton Denny, a surveyor who works part time with Auburn. "The line was probably the least defined line between the states because nobody knew where the mounds were."

Discovery of the original line doesn't change the official state line. Alabama and Florida have settled on 31 degrees latitude as the border, which can be easily located with modern technology. But most land surveys on either side of the border are based on the original line.

"We're hoping to come up with a map that will show good locations where the mounds are," Denny said. "And record that map in courthouses on both sides of the line."

The mound line, known as Ellicott's Line, was established by Andrew Ellicott, a prominent surveyor for the government in the republic's early years. He also worked on the Mason-Dixon line and the original survey of Washington, D.C.

To establish the boundary between Spanish Florida and the United States at the 31-degree line, Ellicott surveyed a line from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. The line would eventually become the Alabama-Florida state line east of Baldwin County to the Georgia state line, Denny said.

In Alabama, the best known marker for the line is Ellicott's Stone, a stone monument at the Mobile River.

"It's probably one of the oldest monuments in Alabama," Denny said. "Anything before 1800 in Alabama is pretty old."

To mark the rest of the line, the survey crew erected mounds about 4 feet tall about every mile. Over the years, farming and logging operations and ordinary erosion took their toll. Wooded areas grew up, the landscape changed and the mounds disappeared from sight.

By last year, only two were actually known, one near the Conecuh River and one near the Chattahoochee River. That gave Denny something to work with.

The line had been resurveyed in 1854 and a map created of the mounds. A historical researcher discovered the map of the resurvey and passed it on to Denny.

Using the map, the two known mounds and technology including Google Earth, Global Information System and Global Positioning System, Denny devised a formula to determine where the mounds are. He tested the theory by using the formula to locate the two known mounds and was dead on.

But going out and physically finding the mounds was a different matter. The area where they are is filled with swamps, marshes and beaver ponds.

Part of Denny's work with Auburn includes conducting workshops in the field for surveyors who need to renew their certification or get extra training. He decided to make finding the mounds the exercise for the Dec. 3-4 workshop.

Forty surveyors signed up for the project. Using Denny's formula, they searched the swamps and woods of South Alabama and North Florida for the mounds.

"We were excited because we were finding them where I thought they would be," Denny said. "We were finding them to a 10th of a second of where we thought they would be. And they were surveyors and when they found them, they could recognize what they were."

Warren Brown, a registered professional engineer from Tuscaloosa, took part in the project. His crew started out slowly. The first few sites they searched were agricultural fields or pine plantations, and it was obvious that the mounds would no longer be there.

Then they went to another site that hadn't seen as much human disturbance. They used hand-held GPS units to find the coordinates that Denny had provided and then began a circular search pattern around the coordinates.

"That first mound that we found, it was extremely exciting," Brown said. "We had literally just about given up and were heading back to the vehicles. I just kept my eyes on the ground and I saw it. I didn't know it was the mound. But I got up and stood on top of it and looked around 360 degrees and said, 'I think this is it.' "

The entire party began looking at the ground and Tuscaloosa resident Ike Espy pointed to the center of the mound.

"Right under my feet was a stake or what surveyors call a hub," Brown said. "It was a hand-hewn fat pine stake that some surveyor had put in the ground. Chances are it was pretty old. This was obviously the work of a surveyor from many, many years ago."

Brown's crew located two mounds with certainty and two more that appeared likely. They were usually within 50 feet of Denny's coordinates, but were well camouflaged by their surroundings.

"They don't pop out at you," Brown said. "You kind of look for a uniform depression in the ground that forms a 10- to 12-foot circle. Once you found the depression, the mound kind of pops out at you. The giveaway was the depression around the mound."

When the original survey crew made the mounds, it appeared that they stood in a circle and dug a trench around the point they were marking and used the dirt to make a mound. Not only would there be a mound, there would also be a depression around it. More dirt was added to them during the 1854 survey.

"It was like a doughnut when they finished," Denny said.

Later surveyors often drove stakes into the mounds as markers, making them easier to identify. But time took its toll on the mounds and changed their appearance.

"It's been a long time," Denny said. "There were a few of them where a surveyor had put a cedar post in them. That made it pretty easy. Most of them now are between 1 foot and 2.5 feet tall. They are generally round."

In some places, farming and logging obliterated the mounds. The more remote the location, the more likely the mounds were to still be there.

"The place that you find most of them is the most undesirable, undisturbed ground, the swamps," Denny said. "If it's been timbered and they're running all the machines over them, it probably ruins them."

Originally, there were 120 mounds. Denny expects to eventually be able to document 35 to 40.

"We have 24 of the mounds that we are absolutely certain of, and we put concrete markers on them," Denny said. "We have 10 locations that, because of flooding and problems with property owners, we haven't searched yet."

Denny is also working with a division of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources that is responsible for state boundaries. They are trying to locate the spots where mounds have disappeared as well.

"Eventually, we would like to put a monument back in, even though the mound is gone," Denny said.

Working to find the mounds adds to Denny's appreciation for Ellicott's work. He had to sift his way through politics as well as swamps.

Ellicott discovered that Natchez, Miss., was above 31 degrees. When the Spanish found that they had ceded an important river port, they were angry. The two countries almost came to blows over it.

The wrangling with the Spanish delayed his work for a couple years. When he did start, he found the swampy terrain difficult to cover, Denny said. Ellicott got a schooner so that he could sail down the coast, run up rivers and use it for a base to survey from.

And trying to survey the line was technically difficult.

"The line is not technically a straight line," Denny said. "It's a latitude and it goes around the earth. The earth is a sphere and it's a curving line. He's in the field in 1799 sitting in a tent and he's using spherical trigonometry to calculate the difference between a straight line and a latitude. That's amazing."